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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26176249">break out and start a fire</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/'>Anonymous</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>IT (Movies - Muschietti)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Superpowers, Established Relationship, M/M, Married Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Past Medical Torture, Past Torture, Semi-Epistolary, if you saw deadpool old guard and stranger things you have an idea what to expect, mutual dependency, no graphic torture scenes in the narrative but some graphic descriptions in diary entries, whump sorta</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 04:14:54</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>24,133</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26176249</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Eddie groans. “Not the aliens again.” His finger jabs Richie in the chest. “We didn’t get these abilities because of fucking aliens! We got them because they’re probably hereditary or some shit, I thought we agreed on that already after you read about the prom incident in Chamberlain—”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“I didn’t say anything about our superpowers!” Richie says, throwing his hands up in surrender. “All I mean is, an alien abduction would handily explain why we didn’t remember shit-all about our childhoods. As for why they’re just now coming back, it’s simple, Mike figured out how to get around the memory wipe and used it on himself, now he’s using it on us.”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“It can’t be fucking aliens,” says Eddie.</i>
</p><p>or: the Losers walk away from the summer of 1989 with superpowers. most of them manage to keep them under wraps. Richie and Eddie, though, have the sheer bad luck in college to be seen by someone very interested in finding out more about these superpowers.</p><p>ten years after burning down the lab they were trapped in, they get a call from Derry.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>52</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Anonymous</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. everybody knows that the dice are loaded</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>title is from The Who's "Another Tricky Day".</p><p><b>content warnings:</b> canon-typical horror, as in the movie. descriptions and references of medicalized torture and human experimentation—if you saw <i>Deadpool</i>, <i>The Old Guard</i> and <i>Stranger Things</i> (the last of which there's a low-key crossover), you have some idea what you're in for. (no actual scenes of torture.) non-graphic sex between a married couple. fire. mention of animal death(s). clowns. vomiting. Richie Tozier's even more morbid sense of humor. major character injury (no death). mentions of canonical suicide attempt of major character. if I've missed something, do let me know.</p>
    </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>chapter title is from Leonard Cohen's "Everybody Knows".</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Eddie finds Richie smoking on the porch steps, after Mike hangs up. He leans back against the doorway, watching the smoke drift lazily upwards towards the lone lightbulb on the porch. They’d changed it out just yesterday after stringing up the hammock, because Richie wanted to read after nightfall despite Eddie pointing out that the damage he could do to his eyes.</p><p>“These peepers?” Richie had said, pointing to them. “Eddie, these peepers have been stabbed at least three times, and they heal as fast as the rest of me. They can deal with a little stress.”</p><p>“You were complaining about headaches last year,” Eddie had sniped back.</p><p>“They’re fine now!”</p><p>“Because we got you glasses!” And he’d jabbed Richie in the chest with a finger. “Because you haven’t updated your prescription since college!”</p><p>But Richie had won that argument, so there’s a hammock on the porch now. It isn’t <i>their</i> porch, just as this house isn’t really <i>their</i> home, and Eddie has been on the run too long to think that they can have a home they can safely call <i>theirs</i>. Safer not to stake a claim, he knows. Safer to always be ready to run, at a moment’s notice.</p><p>Eddie steps onto the creaky floorboard. “I’d ask if you’re okay,” he says, quietly, “but I think I already know the answer.”</p><p>Richie looks up at him, and nods. The end of his cigarette glows red between his fingers, embers drifting downward towards the ground like snowflakes in winter. “The last time I was this scared,” he says, “we were running away from the lab.”</p><p>Eddie drums restless fingers against his kneecap. “The last time I was this scared,” he says, “I thought they’d figured out how to make an injury stick on you.”</p><p>Richie looks down at his cigarette, brings it back up to his lips and inhales. He breathes out slow, a cloud of grey smoke puffing out from between his lips.</p><p>For once, Eddie doesn’t huff and puff about the risks of smoking, the possibility of lung cancer, the dangers of nicotine when introduced to the human body. Richie doesn’t even really smoke that much, hasn’t since 2014 when he got caught near a gas explosion because of a lit cigarette, but when he does, Eddie knows he’s deeply terrified.</p><p>And Eddie’s own terror must be obvious to Richie too, because Richie says, “You okay, Eds?”</p><p>“Don’t call me that,” Eddie mutters, pressing the heel of his palm against his forehead, pushing his hair back. He ought to get a haircut, they’re already those two strange weirdos to almost everyone in town, if he wants to get some kind of job he had better look presentable. Then he remembers: they aren’t going to stay here. Not anymore, not after Mike’s call. They’ll have to pack up what little they own here and run to Derry, to meet—whatever it is they’re going to meet. Not death, hopefully. God, please, not death. “I’m just—worried. That’s all.”</p><p>“Mike wouldn’t turn us in,” says Richie. “For one thing, the call would’ve come a hell of a lot earlier. He had to track us down first, and since we haven’t seen anybody in a lab coat recently, he hasn’t said shit-all to anyone.” He pauses. “The stalking is fucking creepy, though, I should tell him that.”</p><p>“Tell him friends don’t stalk friends,” Eddie says, deadpan, and Richie snickers. “And it isn’t that I’m worried about. Of course Mike would never turn us in, he doesn’t even know what happened to us.” That had been the first thing Eddie had checked on when it was his turn to talk to Mike. He’d huddled in the car, still parked in the garage, and delicately phrased his questions so Mike wouldn’t realize Eddie was trying to feel out just who he was loyal to, or what. Maybe that makes him a terrible friend, not being able to trust anyone else outside of himself and Richie, but he is reasonably certain now that Mike would never sell them out, so maybe that makes up for his earlier doubts.</p><p>“So what are you worried about?” Richie asks.</p><p>“Same thing you are,” says Eddie. “I couldn’t—I couldn’t stay inside the garage, I was panicking so much.” The second he’d felt the heat come to his fingertips, he’d flung himself out of the car and sprinted for the backyard. He scratches the back of his head now, and says, “The, uh, the backyard’s a little burnt, now.”</p><p>“Aw, fuck, there goes the life-size hedge elephant I was working on,” Richie says. But his hand, the one without the cigarette between his fingers, gently settles over Eddie’s, their fingers lacing together. “I’m sorry,” he says, softly.</p><p>“I heard the puking before you gave me the phone, you’re fine,” says Eddie, giving Richie’s hand a squeeze. “Should we go back? I mean, we made a promise.”</p><p>“Fuck no,” says Richie.</p><p>“He said he’d called the others,” says Eddie. “The—The other Losers.”</p><p>“The fuck are you talking about,” says Richie, reflexively. Then he sucks in a shocked breath. “Oh,” he says. “The Losers. <i>Us.</i> I can’t—I can’t believe we forgot.”</p><p>“Yeah, neither can I,” says Eddie, memories drifting across the forefront of his mind now. He loved them all. He loved them so fucking much. “I—Rich, I wanna see them again.”</p><p>“God fucking dammit,” says Richie. “Me too.” He pulls in one last smoke, then breathes out and drops the cigarette onto the ground, stubbing it out with the heel of his shoe. “Okay. So we’re going to Derry, then?”</p><p>“We’ll have to,” says Eddie, as he stands up and brushes the dust off his pants.</p><p>“This is such a terrible fucking idea, I just want you to know,” says Richie. “When do we leave?”</p><p>“Tonight,” says Eddie.</p><p>“I’ll pack my shit.”</p><p>--</p><p>
  <i>From the diary of Richie Tozier:</i>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">July 4, 2006</span>
</p><p>It’s been a week since we left the lab a burning wreck, and so far no goons have come after us just yet. Either they all burned to death when Eddie flipped out and burned the place down, or they’re laying low and trying to rebuild. A couple of escaped lab rats wouldn’t be very high priority on their list in either case, but some part of me really fucking hopes it’s the former.</p><p>Last month I turned thirty. In November Eddie’s going to hit the big three-oh, too. It feels weird, being technically a fully-grown adult who spent a full third of his life trapped underground. Or almost a full third, whatever. Felt like fucking forever.</p><p>Nine years. Nine fucking years. This is the first Fourth of July either of us have had in nine goddamn years. Are my parents having a cookout right now? Do they miss me? Do they feel like a part of them got carved out, when they heard I’d gone missing? I want to tell them I’m still alive, I want to hug them again, I miss them so fucking much and I want Went to make puns at me and ruffle my hair while Mags makes us pancakes, but I can’t. I can’t. Eddie and I don’t really know a whole lot about the people who caught us and trapped us in their lab like dragonflies in amber, but I distinctly remember them mentioning their government ties, MK-ULTRA, hokey bullshit I would’ve dismissed back in the one year and one semester of college I had. I don’t know if they really meant it or if they were just trying to scare us, but I’m not going to risk it.</p><p>I bought this in the last town to be my joke notebook, but I’m not feeling very funny at the moment. I bought one for Eddie too. First real purchases either of us have made in years, and it’s a couple of notebooks from Indiana. The rest—clothes, car, shoes, socks, bags, even the money—we ended up stealing. We’re dumping this car as soon as we’re at least two states away from fucking Indiana, and then who knows where we’ll go from there. Maybe I’ll finally be a comedian like I always wanted. (Or maybe pigs will fly.)</p><p>There are fireworks being set off right now, lighting the night sky red, white, and blue. Eddie’s been riveted for the past ten minutes, and keeps calling me over to look at the fireworks. I think they’re pretty, sure, and I guess they’re a lot more spectacular to us than they would be to an ordinary person, but when Eddie’s right there, what do I care about fireworks? He’s better than fireworks. If it wasn’t for Eddie I wouldn’t be out here right now enjoying the first Fourth of July I’ve had in nine years.</p><p>I ought to make a joke in here, I feel bad pouring my heart out in this thing that was just supposed to be me brainstorming bits and shit, maybe a whole routine I can workshop in clubs. But I guess that’s really just wishful thinking—can’t get established if you’re always on the run, and I think we’ll always be on the run. Like Bonnie and Clyde, except with <span class="u">significantly</span> less murder and bank robbery and kidnapping and more petty theft and fraud and forgery and about the same amount of car theft. So not really all that much like Bonnie and Clyde when you think about it. Thank fucking god, because who wants to get their brains turned into jelly because they slowed down to help somebody out and the cops gunned them down? Not me, and not Eddie. We’re avoiding the cops if we can help it.</p><p>Eddie and Richie, Richie and Eddie. Has a nice ring to it, though, you have to admit.</p><p>He’s coming over right now. I better write something funny.</p><p>Your mom’s so fat that she can cross state lines standing still.</p><p>Your mom’s like a doorknob, everybody gets a turn.</p><p>Your mom’s so old that she was there in her rocking chair when the Big Bang happened. (Workshop this!)</p><p>Why did the dead baby cross the road? It was stapled to the chicken! (Too dark, Eddie made a face at me, cut this.)</p><p>--</p><p>
  <b>DISAPPEARED</b><br/>
<i>Episode 75: Richie Tozier and Eddie Kaspbrak</i>
</p><p><b>Thad Beaumont:</b> <i>[narrating]</i> I met Maggie and Wentworth Tozier at their home in Glen Rock, New Jersey. It’s a pleasant little house in a small slice of suburbia, but when I stepped inside, the first thing I saw was a picture of their missing son, Richard, better known as Richie. In this picture, he’s sixteen, with blue eyes and a wide grin, leaning against his older sister Elizabeth, twenty-one years old in the picture. There is a photo of him at his high school graduation, his father proudly pinning a medal to his chest.</p><p><b>Wentworth Tozier:</b> We missed out on so much of Richie’s life, when he was younger. We were always so busy, keeping the house together, scrambling to pay tuition for two kids and put money in their college fund. I never thought… <i>[audible sniffle]</i></p><p><b>TB:</b> Can either of you tell me what he was like?</p><p><b>Maggie Tozier:</b> Oh, he was a jokester, our Richie. I never really understood him, per se, he took after Went so much—always dreaming big, always chasing after the laughter.</p><p><b>WT:</b> He loved doing impressions. Whenever I was home, I’d hear him doing them over and over, trying to get them just right, trying to nail them.</p><p><b>MT:</b> He was always—Went, d’you remember, he was always trying to get us to watch something he was doing?</p><p><b>WT:</b> We never did. We were always so busy, so eventually he just—stopped. What I wouldn’t <i>give</i> to go back in time, take a day off, go see him in a school play, in a comedy club, just see him.</p><p><b>MT:</b> He was such a funny little boy, a bright boy, but as he was growing up we just...drifted apart. There were things he didn’t tell us, and we just didn’t pay enough attention to him. Sometimes not until he broke his glasses, or got in a fight—he wasn’t much of a fighter, but there was a boy, I don’t remember his name, that Richie used to be very protective of.</p><p><b>WT:</b> I think it was—Edwin? Edgar?</p><p><b>TB:</b> Edward?</p><p><b>WT:</b> Likely. Neither of us can really remember, it’s strange.</p><p><b>TB:</b> <i>[narrating]</i> Coincidentally, around the same time Richie Tozier disappeared, so did a fellow college student named Edward Kaspbrak, in the same area. But we’ll get to him later. For now…</p><p><b>TB:</b> When was the last time you saw Richie?</p><p><b>WT:</b> We found Richie’s name on a list of stand-ups, for a fundraiser his college was doing. And we had time, so we figured we’d surprise him. So we went, and we saw him do this fifteen-minute routine with this impression he called Buford Kissdrivel. Brought down the damn <i>house</i>, he did.</p><p><b>MT:</b> He was so surprised that we showed up, so happy—we spent the night being toured around the city, and you could tell he loved it, loved the attention, loved that he was making his name. We had to leave the next day, because Went had an appointment, and I remember he dropped us off at the bus stop. I remember he hugged us before we left, and said he’d drop in for Thanksgiving after auditioning for SNL. I even remember his shirt, it was this band shirt for Dürt Würk. And I remember how he was waving as the bus pulled away, how he just seemed to fade as the distance got bigger and bigger, until finally I couldn’t see him at all. If I had known—I’d have hugged him tighter.</p><p><b>WT:</b> We got the news the next week. He hadn’t come back to his dorm after one of his classes, and it had been two days. He just—vanished, just like that. They said he ran out, but Richie’s a smart kid and he loved what he was doing there. Why would he run?</p><p>--</p><p>They check into an inn off Mint Spring, somewhere in Virginia, after almost eleven hours’ worth of driving. Easier to fly, certainly, but flying has too much risk these days for either of them to chance it, so a drive it is. Richie calls Mike back to let him know that they’ll be in Maine by the next day or so, then he and Eddie fall into bed together.</p><p>By now the sex between them is easy, almost lazy. It’s been nearly nineteen years since they had that first frantic kiss in the darkness, and they’ve come a long way from then. That having been said, there’s a new urgency to their movements, a new passion that catches Richie off-guard, because usually they’re much slower about this. But then again, usually they’re not on their way to Derry and whatever hellish thing is waiting for them there, lurking beyond the shadow of their memory.</p><p>Afterwards, after the clean-up, Eddie lies down next to Richie and says, “We knew Bill Denbrough and Bev Marsh.”</p><p>“The novelist and the fashion designer?” Richie asks, nudging closer to Eddie. But no, now that Eddie says it, the memories are starting to resurface: a boy with the weight of the world on his shoulders, a girl with hair as red as fire. “Shit,” he says. “No wonder the werewolf in Bill’s werewolf book sounded familiar, he based it off <i>me</i>. I oughta get a share of his royalties.”</p><p>“He based the love interest off Bev, he better give her royalties too,” says Eddie. “I always thought Bev was going to be like, a stuntwoman or something.”</p><p>“I think,” says Richie, slowly, “she wanted to get into fashion. I remember she used to stick me with pins all the time, ‘cause she needed a mannequin and her aunt could not afford <i>shit</i>.”</p><p>“She never—wait, she <i>did</i> ask me to model for her once,” says Eddie, snapping his fingers. “You were there.”</p><p>“And I had a crisis over your legs,” says Richie, in wonder at the memory just now beginning to emerge from the depths of his subconscious. “If teenaged me knew we were gonna get together he would’ve had a nervous breakdown.”</p><p>“Mine would’ve been so much worse,” says Eddie, idly tracing patterns over Richie’s chest with the tip of his index finger. “What the fuck made us forget? How come we’re only remembering all this now?”</p><p>“You’re asking me?” Richie says. “I’ve got about as much of an idea about this shit as you, maybe less.” He shrugs. “Maybe it’s just trauma.”</p><p>“If that worked we’d have blocked out the lab in its entirety,” Eddie says, which, okay, that’s true. Sure, Richie doesn’t think about the lab very often, or of that piece of shit Dr. Brenner (who he’s hoping broke his hip and fucking died in agony) either, but not thinking about something isn’t the same as full-blown amnesia. He still remembers too much of the lab. He didn’t even know Derry <i>existed</i> until Mike called.</p><p>“Haven’t got any other theories, Eds,” Richie says. “Well. Besides the alien abduction one, anyway.”</p><p>Eddie groans. “Not the aliens <i>again</i>.” His finger jabs Richie in the chest. “We didn’t get these abilities because of fucking aliens! We got them because they’re probably hereditary or some shit, I thought we agreed on that already after you read about the prom incident in Chamberlain—”</p><p>“I didn’t say anything about our superpowers!” Richie says, throwing his hands up in surrender. “All I mean is, an alien abduction would handily explain why we didn’t remember shit-all about our childhoods. As for why they’re just now coming back, it’s simple, Mike figured out how to get around the memory wipe and used it on himself, now he’s using it on us.”</p><p>“It can’t be fucking aliens,” says Eddie. “It just can’t be, because if aliens are real, they wouldn’t be interested in some backwards-ass planet that hasn’t even figured out manned space travel just yet.” He prods Richie’s shoulder, his brow furrowing and his nose wrinkling. It makes him look incredibly adorable, melts Richie’s heart into a puddle. “We’ve got nothing to offer.”</p><p>“We’re covered in water and land and we’re the luckiest planet in the solar system,” says Richie. “We have tons to offer.”</p><p>“You have watched way too many sci-fi movies,” Eddie huffs.</p><p>“Films,” Richie corrects.</p><p>“You fucking snob.”</p><p>Richie rolls over onto his side, reaches out his hand to skim over Eddie’s bare hip. “You like it,” he says.</p><p>“No, I don’t,” says Eddie, and his hand splays out flat on Richie’s chest, then scratches lightly over his sternum, fingers catching on his chest hair. “I think it’s ridiculous that you keep calling them films. Who are you, a movie critic for the New York Times?”</p><p>“I could be,” says Richie, delighted. “They’ll let anybody in if they’re into the arthouse shit. I’ll quote Orson Welles at them and they’ll fall all over themselves to hire me.”</p><p>“They’ll wonder if you got lost on your way to 30 Rock for your SNL audition,” says Eddie. Then he sucks in a sharp breath, and says, quietly, “Fuck, I’m sorry.”</p><p>Years ago the reminder of that missed opportunity would’ve been the equivalent of a kick in the teeth, and Richie would’ve flinched away from Eddie after such a careless remark. It still aches now, but it’s been dulled by time and age, no longer a knife twisting in his heart but a mild cramp that sits in the bottom of his chest—still painful, but manageable. He wraps his arms around Eddie instead, gently taps his forehead against Eddie’s.</p><p>“It’s okay,” he says. “They’d love to hire you, I’ll bet.”</p><p>“You think so?” Eddie asks.</p><p>“Yeah, for the stories about new diseases, since you’re even more of an expert than actual doctors are, Mister ‘I Ran Away From Pre-Med After One Semester’,” says Richie, and Eddie groans, knocks their knees together.</p><p>“I should never have told you I ever even thought about pre-med,” he grumbles. “Asshole.” He curls in closer to Richie, throws an arm carelessly around his torso. “Which one of us gets first crack at driving tomorrow?”</p><p>“Me,” says Richie.</p><p>“So sleep,” says Eddie. “You need eight hours of sleep if you’re gonna drive.”</p><p>“Bullshit, I need eight gallons of coffee injected directly into my bloodstream.”</p><p>“That much caffeine would overload your heart and kill you stone dead,” says Eddie. “And then when you come back, <i>I’ll</i> kick your nuts up into your throat.” He presses a kiss to Richie’s collarbone, and Richie bites back a noise as Eddie’s lips press against the bruises his teeth left behind earlier, in the heat of the moment. “Sleep,” Eddie murmurs, softer now.</p><p>“You put it that way, how can I refuse,” Richie wryly says, letting his eyes fall shut.</p><p>They go to sleep together that way, limbs tangled together, Richie snoring fitfully into Eddie’s hair.</p><p>--</p><p>
  <i>From Eddie Kaspbrak’s notebook:</i>
</p><p><span class="u">GROCERY LIST (do not let Richie see until you’ve finished shopping)</span><br/>
- bananas<br/>
- oranges<br/>
- asthma inhaler (fill with tap water + dash of camphor)<br/>
- canned meats (tuna, sausages, corned beef)<br/>
- EZBake mac n cheese<br/>
- camping equipment (tent, stove, sleeping bags)<br/>
- matches<br/>
- medical supplies (burn ointment, bandages, antibiotics, disinfectant, rubbing alcohol, splints, gauze)<br/>
- stuff for hotwiring cars<br/>
- baseball bat<br/>
- clothes<br/>
- lube</p><p>--</p><p>
  <i>From the diary of Richie Tozier:</i>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">July 25, 2006</span>
</p><p>Day 28 of freedom.</p><p>I’m sitting in the parking lot of a grocery store trying not to freak out because I can’t see Eddie anywhere. I know he’s inside buying shit so we don’t die of starvation or scurvy or exposure on the road, but every time he leaves I can’t help but wonder if they’ll catch him while he’s alone and I’ll never even know. He’ll just be gone. And it’s stupid, because it’s been almost a month, and they don’t know we’re all the way in Gilchrist, Oregon, and they have no fucking reason to know, because there’s nothing for us here in Gilchrist. Logically, we’re doing fucking amazing, for a couple of assholes who’ve been out of the world since 1997.</p><p>But I’m still so fucking scared. I can’t talk to my parents, I don’t know where my college roommate and friends went, I didn’t even get to keep the business card of that agent guy who liked my show. I only have Eddie and he only has me, and when there’s only one other person in your world, and that same person has been through the same shit as you, you get very, very worried when they’re not in sight. Even when they’re just in the grocery store. Even when you <i>know</i> that. Fear doesn’t care about what you know, it cares that there’s someone you love and the loss of them would just break you.</p><p>I hate this. I keep wanting to head inside, but if I say it’s just to check, Eddie will point out we’ve checked the perimeter and the inside like three times already. Maybe four or five. And he’ll try not to show it but he’s gonna be real fucking annoyed, he’s got a real problem with people worrying over him when he’s just trying to do shit. Says his mom didn’t trust him to look after himself and not be a danger. (Thinks she was right. She wasn’t. He’s never been a danger to me.) If I go in there he’ll likely think I don’t trust him to look after himself, but I do trust him, that’s the thing. That’s why I’m out here instead of in there. I just don’t want to lose him to something neither of us can see coming. I just remember all the times he fell asleep next to me in the lab and then they dragged one of us away to be poked and prodded at, and it scares me, not having him in sight.</p><p>Which is fucked up, I know. But this entire situation is fucked up, so</p><p>He’s outside, hold on.</p><p>I think he got worried about me too. Can’t blame him. They could get really creative with me, they just had to fuck with his head. I told him to go back inside and that I could wait. I shouldn’t have, I’m still freaking out a little over him, but I don’t want him to think I’m pushing his boundaries or whatever. He can take care of himself.</p><p>Anyway, somebody does have to keep an eye out here.</p><p>--</p><p>It’s nearing dusk when they finally cross over the town line, which is why Richie almost hits a deer. That’s what he’s going to tell people, anyway: <i>my eyes aren’t at their best, and it was getting dark, and silly me, I almost hit a deer!</i></p><p>The truth is, the wave of memories that hit him the moment their car passes over the town line is so strong that his attention is entirely off the road. The only thing that manages to bring it back is Eddie yelling about the deer, and Richie snaps back to attention just in time to swerve wildly to the side and off the road, slamming on the brakes so they don’t crash into a tree. When the car skids to a stop, Richie rolls the windows down to let the smoke from Eddie’s seat out, unbuckles his seatbelt, and then staggers out to throw up the egg sandwich he ate on the way.</p><p>Eddie steps out of the car too after a moment, shaking his hands out. They’re still smoking a little, so he stuffs them into his pockets and starts breathing deeply, in, hold, then out. In, hold, then out.</p><p>Then he says, “Fuck, Rich, did you kiss me before prom and then run away?”</p><p>“Do not fucking mention prom to me right now,” Richie groans, the memories assaulting his poor, defenseless brain. He grips on to the edge of the car’s hood, another wave of nausea rolling through his body. “In fact can we just not talk about—anything right now? Can I puke in peace? Oh, <i>god</i>.”</p><p>“Oh, yuck,” says Eddie, fussy as ever, but he comes over to hold Richie’s hair back, and just in time too, because that wave of nausea results in Richie puking up yet more of his stomach’s contents. “Okay. Nothing about Derry, then.”</p><p>“Please god no,” Richie pleads, his voice hoarse.</p><p>“Um,” says Eddie. “Okay, hey. So. Last week I hopped on Max’s Netflix account, and she had this cartoon up, I think it was called BoJack Horseman? So I thought, hey, this looks funny, I’ll watch it. And I did, and it <i>was</i> funny, is the thing? It was just also really fucking depressing, like, a lot. I didn’t think cartoons could <i>get</i> depressing.”</p><p>“Halfling rogue Max?” Richie asks, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.</p><p>Eddie rolls his eyes. “Yes, Rich,” he says. “Halfling rogue Max. You fucking nerd.”</p><p>“She invited <i>you</i> to her party, dipshit,” Richie says, “so you’re the bigger nerd here. Max clocked you after two days of chatting, no use denying it.”</p><p>“Yeah, but you’re the one rolling dice with them and doing the Irish Cop voice,” says Eddie. “So, really, between the two of us <i>you’re</i> the bigger nerd, ‘cause I’m not the one doing fucking math to see if I hit a made-up glorified lizard hoarder—”</p><p>“Dragons,” Richie cuts in, “they’re dragons, and that’s a gross generalization—”</p><p>“They’re <i>fictional fucking lizards</i>, I can generalize all I want! They’re not going to give a shit!”</p><p>“Oh, so when <i>I</i> generalize the people having affairs on your soaps I’m not considering their circumstances, but when <i>you</i> do it—”</p><p>Leaves crunch.</p><p>Their argument breaks off, then and there, and Richie steps back, pulls the passenger door open to pull the baseball bat out. “You hear that?” he asks, softly.</p><p>“Yeah, I heard it,” Eddie mutters, backing up. “It didn’t sound like a person.”</p><p>“Oh, cool, so we might die to Bigfoot,” Richie says.</p><p>“Bigfoot doesn’t exist,” says Eddie, stepping behind Richie, “and even if he did, do you really think he’d be in Maine?”</p><p>“Point,” Richie concedes, watching the trees. There—that shape in the shadows, is that an animal or a person? Richie twirls the baseball bat in his hand, his other hand pushing Eddie behind himself. “If anything happens, get in the car and drive away,” he says. “I’ll catch up.”</p><p>“Like <i>fuck</i> am I leaving you,” Eddie says, outraged.</p><p>“We <i>agreed</i>—”</p><p>“I never agreed, you said <i>hey you better abandon me if shit goes south</i> and I said <i>are you fucking with me</i>, what part of that was a verbal fucking <i>agreement</i>, you giant goddamn—”</p><p>“Between the two of us I can come back from almost anything,” Richie interrupts, “you can’t.”</p><p>“The vows are <i>until death do us part</i>,” says Eddie. “I meant them when I said them. All of it. Sickness and health, richer or poorer, until death, the whole fucking thing, and I am not going to fucking well leave you.”</p><p>“But—”</p><p>Leaves crunch again, and a doe steps into sight, twigs and fallen, rotting leaves crunching under its soft hooves. In the back of Richie’s head, a voice floats up to the surface, singing, <i>doe, a deer, a female deer!</i> The doe’s black eyes swing from Richie to Eddie, then back to Richie again, interested and curious over their sudden presence, even a little wary of the baseball bat, but not afraid of them. And why should it be? It’s minding its own fucking business, that’s all.</p><p>Richie’s breath starts again. He hadn’t even realized he was holding it. It’s just a doe. It’s just another fucking deer.</p><p>Eddie grips his arm, stares the deer down like it’s personally offended him. His palms are starting to run a little hotter than normal.</p><p>Richie doesn’t mean to do the Irish cop voice, is the thing. In fact, he’s just going to tell Eddie to let go and calm down, and then bundle him into the shotgun seat and drive into Derry proper. But the voice rolls out of his mouth before he can stop it, a great big bowling ball that’s spun into the gutter out of Richie’s control:</p><p>“Well, <i>Jay</i>-sus Christ on a crumbling cracker, what’s a nice little deer like you doin’ out in these here dark ol’ woods, and with night comin’ on so strong? Don’t y’know ye’re supposed to be snug as a bug at home?” He flaps his hand at the deer, says, “Ye best be gettin’ on home now, <i>deer!</i> Go on, go on, get!”</p><p>The deer tilts its head at him. Eddie’s hand has cooled down, but now he’s staring at Richie in complete bafflement. Richie can’t blame him, he can hear the echoes of his outburst bouncing around the woods still. Off in the distance, a bird trills, sounding very put out at the impression, and Richie thinks, absurdly, <i>Everyone’s a fucking critic.</i></p><p>The deer flicks its tufted tail at the two of them. Then it turns and strides back into the firs, clearly giving up on the strangers that have come to trespass on its territory. The only trace it leaves behind is a small, steaming clump of pellets on the ground.</p><p>“Rich,” says Eddie. “I think you scared the shit out of it. Literally.”</p><p>Richie turns to look at him.</p><p>It only takes five seconds before they start trying to stifle giggles, and three more until the giggling turns into full-blown laughter, Eddie holding on to Richie as they howl with laughter at the sheer ridiculousness of it all—two forty-year-old men getting scared shitless by a fucking deer before one of them chases it off in an accent so thickly Irish that it’s a shock he isn’t wearing any green. And to top it off, he scared the shit out of it! Literally! Submitted for your examination: the heap of pellets that keeps setting them off into fits of laughter as soon as one or both of them have gotten it under control.</p><p>It takes a long while for either of them to calm down, and Richie’s still snickering by the time he gets back into the driver’s seat. He looks over at Eddie, who’s buckling his seatbelt and minutely adjusting the rear view mirrors, and smiles. Then he leans over to press a kiss to Eddie’s cheek.</p><p>“Love you,” he says, and reaches his hand over to squeeze Eddie’s.</p><p>“Love you too,” says Eddie. “Even if your Irish cop is terrible.”</p><p>“You love it,” says Richie, starting the car again.</p><p>--</p><p>
  <b>Episode 215: Dr. Martin Brenner - Part III: Going Full Mad Scientist</b><br/>
<i>Last Podcast on the Left</i>
</p><p>On the conclusion of our series on Dr. Martin Brenner, we cover the events leading up to his disappearance from public life and the rumors that have been surrounding him for years afterward.</p><p>
  <b>Episode 216: Cold Cases at Columbia</b><br/>
<i>Last Podcast on the Left</i>
</p><p>This week, the boys dive into the eerie connections between missing Columbia students Richie Tozier and Eddie Kaspbrak. And there’s a lot more of them than you’d think.</p><p>--</p><p>
  <b>DISAPPEARED</b><br/>
<i>Episode 75: Richie Tozier and Eddie Kaspbrak</i>
</p><p><b>Colleen Huang:</b> Yeah, Eddie was always a pretty sweet guy. Little bit high-strung, something of a mama’s boy, but when we dated he was always good to me. Walked me home and everything.</p><p><b>Thad Beaumont:</b> <i>[narrating]</i> That’s Colleen Huang, an ex-girlfriend of Edward Kaspbrak’s, better known as Eddie to his friends. Unlike the Toziers, Colleen only has one picture of Eddie on display in her New York apartment, and has largely moved on from the case. She has, however, kept an eye out for him all these years—it is, she claims, the least she could do for her friend.</p><p><b>TB:</b> You think he’s still alive?</p><p><b>CH:</b> <i>[soft, self-deprecating chuckle]</i> Yeah, I guess so. It’s ridiculous, I know, it’s been, what, sixteen, seventeen years? But I still think he’s alive out there, somewhere. It’s just wishful thinking, I know it’s more likely he’s dead somewhere, probably because of his fucking mother, but I just—I like to think he’s out there. It’s really the least he deserves.</p><p><b>TB:</b> You don’t seem very enthusiastic about Sonia Kaspbrak. Why is that?</p><p><b>CH:</b> She was a piece of shit, let’s put it that way. Eddie brought me home to meet her once, and all she could talk about was how fucking <i>wrong</i> I was for her sweet, dear little son. Like, wow, okay. Just because I’m not white, she was zeroing in on every single quality she thought was wrong with me—I’m too fat, I’m too weak, I’m too smart, I’m too <i>Chinese</i> and I’ll just bring her son down, I’m not going to spend time with him that he sorely needs. God, it was so embarrassing, Eddie was so angry and I was fucking furious. I worked damn hard just to get into Columbia, and I was working my ass off to keep my grades up. And now here was this woman trying to make me look bad for dating her son. You can imagine how angry we were after that was done.</p><p><b>TB:</b> And you think Sonia had something to do with Eddie’s disappearance? That’s a pretty hefty accusation to make.</p><p><b>CH:</b> I know. She’s dead, she can’t sue me, and I’m not speaking definitively anyway nor am I implying anything about her character that, you know, can’t be gleaned from what’s already out there from what she’s said and done. But Sonia was just—<i>possessive</i> of her son. She didn’t like anyone else coming in and corrupting her perfect baby boy, and she saw me as a corrupting influence on Eddie because, I don’t know, I was in pre-law, I was taking up his time and attention, whatever. Eddie never ate anything she made, not at her house—he was terrified she would’ve slipped something in his food. And she’d always talk about his allergies and his asthma. <i>[incredulous laughter]</i> He ran like a fucking bullet in the PE class we shared! Not a single wheeze there! That’s Munchausen’s by proxy for you. That’s why I think she had something to do with it. She hated that he was more independent, more ready to stand up for himself and do the shit he wanted.</p><p><b>TB:</b> Did you ever try to contact him or his mother, after his disappearance?</p><p><b>CH:</b> I did. A lot. He was one of my best friends even after we broke up, and he just <i>disappeared</i>. I—I was fucking inconsolable, because I couldn’t find him anywhere. I called Sonia, but she wouldn’t give me shit, she just told me never to contact me about her son again, that he’d had a breakdown and she had him committed and that was the end of that. I just—lost it on her. I definitely called her a bitch. She blocked my number. I called around to mental hospitals in the NYC area, asking after him, but no one ever saw him. <i>[She sniffles. When she next speaks, her voice is watery, shaky.]</i> I’m, I’m so sorry, I thought I could talk about this without, without <i>crying</i>, it’s been so fucking long.</p><p><b>TB:</b> What do you think happened to him?</p><p><b>CH:</b> I hope he ran away. I hope to god he ran the fuck away from his mom. Changed his name and everything, just to make sure she could never find him. I really, really do.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. a room full of trouble</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>title is from Arctic Monkeys' "This House is a Circus".</p><p><b>content warnings:</b> canon-typical horror. passing reference to medical experimentation.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <i>From Eddie Kaspbrak’s notebook:</i>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">July 31, 2006</span>
</p><p>Can no longer go near New Mexico ever again. <span class="u"><b>NEVER.</b></span></p><p>--</p><p>
  <i>From the diary of Richie Tozier:</i>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">July 31, 2006</span>
</p><p>Just calmed Eddie down so he doesn’t set a bar in a nowhere town in New Mexico on fire, now he’s sure we have to exile ourselves from New Mexico forever. Like, the entire state of New Mexico. Fucking hilarious.</p><p>I’m gonna talk him down. I missed tequila and the bars here have the best tequila.</p><p>--</p><p>
  <i>From Eddie Kaspbrak’s notebook:</i>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">ANNIVERSARY PLANS</span>
</p><p>Richie Tozier: likes tequila, comedy, nerdy-ass science fiction, horror sometimes, Star Wars, superheroes, video games (Street Fighter)</p><p>MAYBE:<br/>- Star Wars socks<br/>- complete HP Lovecraft collection<br/>- book about superheroes and philosophy he was so fucking into back in the B&amp;N in Orange County<br/>- arcade time??? do arcades even still exist, must do research<br/>- snazzy clothes (actually buy self some snazzy clothes too and not just secondhand from Goodwill)<br/>- funny books?<br/>- comedy club<br/>- comedy movies (Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, Eddie Murphy)</p><p>--</p><p>When they finally make it to the townhouse, it’s late enough that they’re the last ones there, and everyone else has already left for the Jade. Eddie checks them in while Richie hauls their bags up to their rooms, and they have enough time for a quick shower to wash off the grime of the road before they need to go to the Jade.</p><p>There’s two people already outside, when they make it there: a woman in black and white, and a very handsome man with a beard. Richie squints at the two of them and says, “Is that Haystack?”</p><p>“Who?” Eddie says, sliding the parking brake into the P slot and pulling up the hand brake. Then he turns off the radio, then the air conditioner.</p><p>“The hot guy,” says Richie, nodding to the couple hugging outside. “Ben—something?”</p><p>Eddie squints at them, then says, “Wait. Seriously? That’s <i>Ben?</i>”</p><p>“Well, he’s obviously not Mike,” says Richie, “and he doesn’t dress like a ninety-year-old so he can’t be Stan.” He squints at the guy again, then says, contemplatively, “It could be Bill, but I don’t think so. Looks nothing like the author photos.”</p><p>Eddie pulls the key out of the ignition and stuffs it into his pocket. “I’ll go talk to them,” he says. “Can you lock the trunk down?”</p><p>“Sure, sure, go ahead,” says Richie, and Eddie gets out of the car, breathing in the Derry air and then exhaling. It’s strange, being back here in this place he used to call home, in the town that he used to think he’d die in. <i>There’s no place like home,</i> he thinks.</p><p>He pulls the collar of his coat up, then walks over to the duo. “Hey,” he says, “are you two done having your moment? Because my husband and I have a reservation here and we’re late enough as it is.”</p><p>The redhead pulls away, and for a moment, Eddie’s breath catches in his throat. It’s Bev. It’s <i>Beverly</i>, how could he ever have forgotten Beverly fucking Marsh? She’d seemed so cool back then, a cigarette dangling from her fingertips, a smile playing on her face. And yes, the man beside her is Ben, Eddie recognizes him now, god, he really <i>has</i> changed. Lost the baby fat and then some.</p><p>“<i>Eddie?</i>” Bev says, incredulously. “Oh my god, look at you!”</p><p>“You guys look great,” says Eddie, breaking into a smile and stepping forward, opening his arms. Ben reels him in for a hug, and yeah, it is still like hugging a very warm teddy bear. Who just now also happens to be very built. Jesus. If Eddie wasn’t happily married, he’d be planning how to seduce Ben into his bed after this. “Better than me at any rate,” he mumbles into Ben’s shirt.</p><p>“Hey, are you assholes hogging my husband?” And there’s Richie, loud and obnoxious as ever. A warm burst of affection suffuses Eddie’s lungs, and he pulls away from Ben to hug a shocked-looking Bev. “Hi, uh—”</p><p>“Ben,” says Ben, stepping forward to haul Richie in for a hug, too. “It’s good to see you, uh—”</p><p>“Richie,” says Richie, hugging back and slapping Ben on the back before pulling away. “Hey, Bev! Move the fuck over, Eddie.”</p><p>“No, I got here first,” says Eddie.</p><p>Bev smacks him on the arm, says, “I’m not in the mood for men fighting over me at the moment, let me hug Richie. I haven’t seen him in so <i>long</i>.” Her eyes flick between the two of them, and she says, “I’m not going to split up a married couple, anyway.”</p><p>“Bring it here, Bevvie from the levee,” says Richie, and Bev laughs, breaking her hold on Eddie to pull Richie in for a hug as well. She has to go up on her tiptoes to hug him, he’s so fucking tall.</p><p>“I missed you too, Richie from the ditchie,” says Bev, fondly.</p><p>“When did you two get married, anyway?” Ben asks.</p><p>Eddie glances at Richie, who gives a slight nod.</p><p>“About a year,” Eddie says, ignoring the guilt worming its way into his heart at the lie. They’ve been married far longer than that, far before any court in America said they could, but he’s pretty sure a set of vows said and two rings exchanged in a motel room with no one else around to witness it doesn’t count. “Yeah, soon as the ruling came down we got hitched, you wouldn’t believe the fucking lines.”</p><p>“People were <i>camped out</i> right outside the town hall,” says Richie. “It was like Return of the Jedi, except with more rainbows than you could shake a stick at.”</p><p>“Well, congrats,” says Ben, warmly. “I’m glad you guys are happy.”</p><p>“I think,” says Bev, slowly, as if only now remembering it, “that Stan owes me ten dollars.”</p><p>“Okay, when the fuck was this?” Eddie snaps. “Did you know? How the <i>fuck</i> did you know—”</p><p>Richie coughs. “I told her,” he says. “And Stan.”</p><p>“And you told me,” Ben says, nudging Eddie’s side, and oh, right. He’d come to Ben once to hand him his journal for safekeeping, because his mother kept looking through his stuff and Eddie absolutely could not handle her knowing <i>anything</i> about how he felt towards boys, towards Richie in particular. “So, again, congratulations. I’m glad you got your shit together, although I’m kinda curious about <i>how</i>.”</p><p>“Long story,” says Eddie. <i>Long and horrible story.</i></p><p>“Too long,” says Richie. “I’m hungry and in the mood for Chinese. Can we <i>please</i> head in now?”</p><p>--</p><p>Bill is there, and Mike, and even Stan—Richie is unbelievably relieved to see Stan, even if the first thing the guy says to him in twenty-seven years is a roast about his shirt. He’s not sure why he’s so relieved, exactly, but when Stan opens his mouth to say <i>I see Richie’s taking tips from horror movies now,</i> Richie’s breath comes so much easier.</p><p>“I see you’re still getting your clothes from the nursing home, Stanley,” he says. He drops into the chair beside Eddie.</p><p>The first few minutes of the reunion go spectacularly well. Richie pours himself a shot and, with a wink at Eddie, picks his shot glass up with his mouth and downs the whole thing in one go, all without using his hands. He spits it out into another, bigger glass, and says with a flirty smile, “So, Eddie, I hear you’re married now.”</p><p>Eddie rolls his eyes, his mouth twisting in an effort to keep from smiling. A warmth suffuses Richie’s lungs, spreads out into the rest of his body at the sight. “Yeah, Richie, I am, have you got something to say about it?”</p><p>“Yeah, I think you should ditch your husband,” says Richie, “and get with someone who’s got more where that came from.”</p><p>“Tempting,” says Eddie, with a laugh. “Very tempting. But I’ll take that option under consideration.”</p><p>“Really,” says Bev. “In front of my dumplings?”</p><p>Bill snorts out a laugh, says, “Hey, wait, hold on, Richie—since when are you married? You’ve got a wedding ring and everything.”</p><p>“There’s no way Richie got married,” says Stan.</p><p>“Oh, <i>yeah,</i> I almost forgot to tell you guys,” says Richie, running his hand through his hair and making his wedding ring very conspicuous, “I got married to Eddie’s mom three years ago and it has been a non-stop bone-a-thon ever since.”</p><p>Eddie kicks his ankle under the table as everyone else bursts into laughter, Mike having to lean on Bill for support.</p><p>“Yeah, sometimes, she’ll put her arm around me and she’ll whisper to me,” he slides his arm around Eddie and says, in his best Jabba the Hutt impression, “<i>Coona tee-tocky malia, caba dee unko, pateesa.</i>”</p><p>“I get it, dickwad,” huffs Eddie, pulling away to jab Richie in the side with his elbows, “my mom is a great big fat person! Hilarious. <i>Hysterical</i>. Can’t believe I married you.”</p><p>“Holy shit, you two got m-m-mmmmuh-<i>married?</i>” Bill says, surprised.</p><p>“Okay, that, I wasn’t sure about,” says Mike. “I knew you two had found each other somehow, but I wouldn’t have picked <i>married each other</i>, myself.”</p><p>“Duh, we’re married,” says Richie, holding up his hand with his wedding ring, feeling a little thrill at the gasps around their little table. Eddie holds up his own hand, with the golden band firmly snug around his ring finger. “Have been as of last year. Camped out in front of the town hall and everything.”</p><p>“He exaggerates, we didn’t go that far,” says Eddie. “We <i>did</i> show up embarrassingly early, though.”</p><p>“He cried through the vows,” says Richie.</p><p>“You bawled so hard it took you five minutes to say <i>I do</i>,” Eddie retorts.</p><p>“<i>You</i> ruined my rental tux,” Richie says. None of this is, technically, false. They <i>did</i> get married at a town hall last year, right after the Supreme Court said that they could, and Eddie had wept into Richie’s tux. It’s just that the marriage certificate from that wedding is under the names of Franklin Teller and Adam Mills. Their true marriage is still the one in the motel room, all those years ago, unseen and unheard by anyone not them.</p><p>“Well, c-congratulations to you two,” Bill breaks in. “W-We’re happy for y-y-you.”</p><p>“I’m really glad you two found each other,” Mike says. “You always did orbit each other back in the day.”</p><p>Oh, how little does Mike know of their orbiting each other now.</p><p>“And on that note,” says Bev, holding her glass aloft, “I propose a toast. To the Losers.”</p><p>--</p><p>
  <i>From the diary of Richie Tozier:</i>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">August 7, 2006</span>
</p><p>Car broke down near Embudo. We hitchhiked all the way to Kinsley, Kansas. Not a whole lot out here to talk about, but we did get ourselves a new car and a couple of walkie-talkies. We’re camping out right now just off the road, and Eddie’s fast asleep in the tent. I couldn’t sleep, so here I am instead, outside the tent, writing.</p><p>It’s weird. I don’t miss the lab, I hated it and I’m glad we’re finally out of there, but at the same time I’m more and more aware that Eddie and I have been out of touch with the rest of the world for a very long time. Phones were much bigger in ‘97. Now they’re shrinking more and more. I knew the world was going to move on without us, but neither of us were really prepared for this, were we? They were never going to let us out, after all. Not even before they figured out we were fucking, in retrospect, although they wasted no time using that as an excuse. I hate that I believed them, even just for a little while.</p><p>That’s not really all that funny, but then again I don’t think I’ve used this notebook for the reason I bought it for. Should get another notebook, but we’d have to pick up funds first. Either we pick a couple of pockets, break into another house and swipe a couple hundred dollars, or we find a town and we settle down there for a little while. This on-the-road lifestyle gets old fast, and I really fucking miss showers. Sex in creeks is just not the same, and not just because Dr. K will lecture me at length about bacteria in creeks. (He did. We fucked in the backseat of the car instead.)</p><p>Oh, yeah. We saw a comedy club today. I went in, and Eddie came in after me, and we just watched the would-be comedians do their thing. They’re embarrassing, and half the references they dropped neither of us got, because again, nine years under a rock, but it was nice. Would’ve been better if I’d been able to go up there. I would’ve killed at this club, I just know it.</p><p>I keep thinking about what could’ve been, sometimes. What might’ve happened if no one saw me heal up faster than anyone else should. I could be on SNL, or I could be starring in movies, or I could be on Comedy Central doing stand-up. I almost was. Sometimes it fucking hurts to think about how close I was, and how it all came crashing the fuck down, because I wasn’t fucking careful, because somebody saw.</p><p>But other times I wonder, would I have ever met Eddie again if I’d been careful?</p><p>I don’t know. There’s no real use in going over this again and again. It happened, it’s done, and I can’t change it. No matter what, I’d rather have Eddie.</p><p>Even if he drools in his sleep.</p><p>--</p><p>It’s only when Mike tells them about Pennywise having returned, and only when they all even remember just what scared them so much about Derry, that Eddie remembers, suddenly:</p><p>“Didn’t we all have something weird happen to us after the fight?” he says. “Stan, birds started following you around, I remember they used to shit on Richie all the time. Ben, you always knew where the bathroom was, you never had to ask. Mike—”</p><p>“I manifested psychometry,” says Mike, and his casual admission is such a surprise to Eddie, who’s had to hide for so fucking long that he can barely bring himself to even <i>think</i> the word <i>pyrokinesis</i>. But then again, Mike’s never needed to hide. He stayed in Derry, and Brenner and his lot never seemed interested in Derry. “We all developed a talent, after that summer. I used mine to look into how we could defeat It.” He pulls his gloves on and tugs a book out of his bag, says, “This book was written by Jack Cloutier, in 1800, and some of his personal effects are still in the library—”</p><p>“Whoa, whoa, hold up,” says Richie, “didn’t Jack Cloutier get thrown into an asylum ‘cause he’d gone bugfuck insane? And you’re relying on a book written by the local crazy guy?”</p><p>“Yeah, I’m with Richie,” Stan says. “I don’t feel very confident in a book written by someone who was mentally not all there.”</p><p>“He went insane because he <i>fought It</i> and it drove him mad,” says Mike, “but before that, he managed to put together the Ritual of Chud, the best chance we have at defeating It. I even put his hat on so I could commune with him—”</p><p>“Oh, <i>commune</i>, yeah, that sounds like a thing sane people say—” Eddie mutters, pinching the bridge of his nose.</p><p>“Let him speak!” Ben cuts in. “Just hear him out.”</p><p>“What about his hat?” Bill asks, suddenly. “What does Jack Cloutier and his hat have to do with It?”</p><p>“You guys don’t know this, but I figured out how to get my talent to work for me,” says Mike, a glint of desperation in his eyes. God, he’s been here for twenty-seven years, <i>alone</i>. Eddie can barely fathom it, shies away from it, in fact, because save for what little time he’d spent in college, he’s never really been alone. “If I wear something that belonged to a dead man, I can—open a channel and allow them to possess me, I suppose you could say.” Mike taps a finger against the cover of the book, the embossed letters that read <i>Under The Dark</i>. “Even then, it took me twenty-five years of searching to find him and his book. I had to do a <i>lot</i> of asking, both of the living and the dead.”</p><p>“What do we have to do with it, though?” Stan says. “Why us? Why not somebody else?” He pushes back from the table. “We already did our time, why’ve we got to do this again?”</p><p>“Because we’re the ones who fought It the first time,” says Mike. “Because <i>we</i> managed to change <i>It</i> as much as it did with us. We’re the only ones who even stand a chance of defeating It, finishing the fight once and for all. That’s why I called us all back here—because together, we can kill It.”</p><p>Eddie looks over at Richie, whose eyebrows have climbed right into his hairline. Richie looks back, and discreetly gestures at Mike. <i>You hearing this shit?</i> he doesn’t say, but Eddie’s been with him long enough to infer what he wants to say through body language and facial expressions.</p><p>Eddie nods, then shrugs. <i>Yes, it’s fucking weird.</i> He reaches for a fortune cookie, cracks it open, and squints down at the word.</p><p>“We should probably get another d-d-drink,” Bill says.</p><p>“Hey,” says Bev, having cracked open her own fortune cookie already, “my fortune cookie just says <i>Glad</i>.”</p><p>“Mine says <i>Could</i>,” says Eddie.</p><p>Richie frowns at him, then plucks a fortune cookie at random and cracks it open between his fingers. “<i>Make</i>,” he says. “What the fuck kind of fortune’s that?”</p><p>Stan reaches over for a cookie. So do Bill, and Mike, and Ben. <i>So, It, All, You.</i></p><p>“Throw it over here,” says Bill, and Eddie tosses his slip of paper in with the rest of them. “Make, could, all, so, it, you, glad—it’s a puzzle.”</p><p>“It’s a message,” says Mike, frowning.</p><p>Heat builds in Eddie’s palms, just as his heart begins to beat faster. <i>No, no, no</i>—he puts his palms down on the table, shuts his eyes and inhales, exhales. Inhales, exhales. Not now, god, not now, not here, not in Derry. They’ve only just reunited with the best friends they ever had, the only family Eddie’s ever wanted, this can’t happen, not here and not now.</p><p>“It could make you all so glad?” Richie guesses.</p><p>“You all could make it so glad,” says Stan. Then he winces. “Yeah, no, if it means <i>It</i>, I don’t think it’s that glad.”</p><p>“That’s if it’s <i>It</i>,” says Eddie, trying to will away the fire for the moment, please, god, not now, <i>not now</i>. “Could be anything, it’s not specific.”</p><p>“Who the fuck else could it be talking about?” Richie says.</p><p>“What’s tripping me up is the <i>Glad</i>,” says Beverly, standing up and frowning down at it, her hand absently rubbing over her wrist. “Maybe It should be in front, like, here.” She moves that word to the front, forming <i>glad you all could make it so.</i></p><p>“I didn’t know It liked <i>Star Trek,</i>” Richie snidely says.</p><p>“No, no, here, let me try,” says Ben, swapping the words around till he’s come up with <i>make it so you all could glad.</i> “Okay, no,” he says, sheepishly.</p><p>“No, listen, maybe this goes there,” Eddie says, swapping <i>glad</i> with <i>could</i>. “Make it so you all glad could, maybe it’s some old-timey way of saying it—”</p><p>“Bull<i>shit</i> it is,” says Richie.</p><p>“Oh, like <i>your</i> guess was any good—”</p><p>“It’s this way around,” says Stan, decisively, and rearranges the words again. God, the <i>noise</i> they’re kicking up, the sheer volume of their voices—Eddie hadn’t realized quite how loud this reunion could get.</p><p>“Mikey,” says Bill, breaking in and snatching up one of the slips of paper, “what about this, it’s a verb, it m-m-muh-<i>must</i> be in the middle, but then what’s the subject, it or you—”</p><p>“That can’t be right,” says Beverly. “What about <i>could</i>?”</p><p>“This is what I’m talking about,” says Mike, “this is It, It knows we’re here—”</p><p>“Or you fucked with the fortune cookies,” says Richie. “Did you?”</p><p>“Let him <i>speak</i>,” snaps Ben.</p><p>“I’d rather have this be a fucked-up reunion prank,” Richie says, “than the fucking <i>clown</i> that wants us all fucking <i>dead</i>, and by the way if this is a prank it’s not fucking funny—”</p><p>“This is not me,” Mike breaks in, “this is what It does, I told you—”</p><p>Stan shakes his head, sarcastically says, “I’m so glad we all could be here, yelling at each other over trivial shit like old times. Really brings it all back.”</p><p>“That’s it!” Bill says, his voice rising above the rest somehow, aided by the fist he slams against the table to catch their attention. “I know what it is.”</p><p>Eddie looks down at his hands. The table is beginning to smoke under his palms, and he stuffs his hands into his jacket pockets to try and starve the fire of oxygen. “What is it?” he asks.</p><p>Bill swaps the words around. Eddie’s blood freezes in his veins, his heart climbing right into his throat, his throat constricting into a pinhole.</p><p>
  <i>So Glad You All Could Make It.</i>
</p><p>Then the world goes to hell.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. swear there's something in the air</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>title is from the Airborne Toxic Event's "The Kids Are Ready to Die".</p><p><b>content warnings:</b> medical experimentation and medical horror (think Deadpool), animal abuse and death, canon-typical horror imagery (thanks, clown). mention of major character's suicide attempt (unsuccessful in this AU) and implied possible future deaths of major characters. vague allusions toward domestic abuse.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <i>From the diary of Richie Tozier:</i>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">August 9, 2006</span>
</p><p>Can’t sleep. Had a nightmare. Writing this down because maybe it’ll make the fucking nightmares stop, having it out in the open.</p><p>Brenner was always talking about the Cold War, about America’s enemies and the need to outpace them. He was fucking obsessed with it, he thought that if the government didn’t do something drastic to improve its soldiers, then the rest of the world would fuck America over sooner or later. I always figured the guy had just been fucked over by a previous test subject or something, and he couldn’t let go of it. Like a terrier with its teeth sunk right into a juicy bone.</p><p>He found out about me and Eddie because he had an employee working in Columbia, keeping an eye on the security cameras, and connections to psychiatrists and shit. I don’t know how many employees he has, or how far his reach can go, but—the guy’s base of operations is in some corner of Indiana barely anyone’s ever heard about. Eddie and I were in New York when he had us abducted. I can’t help but think that it stretches pretty fucking far.</p><p>Anyway.</p><p>Brenner and his gang took a lot of samples from the both of us. Me more than Eddie, as soon as they figured out what I could do. They couldn’t exactly just cut Eddie open and take whatever they needed, but me? I had fucking infinite resources. If they needed tissue samples, guess who they could take it from. They wanted to figure out how to isolate the gene or the mutation or whatever we had and turn it into something that could be mass-produced, or at least that was the excuse they gave us. “You’re serving your country” becomes a hollow excuse when you’re strapped to a gurney with your insides exposed to the air. Personally? I think they were just sadists.</p><p>At some point, someone wondered if they could have me heal somebody else. A cat, or a dog, or something. That’s the really fucked-up thing about it—they’d cut deep into some poor fucking animal, or burn it, whatever, and leave it bleeding out or dying right in front of me, and told me, save this thing, heal it back up. And I tried, because I’m not a fucking monster. I really did try. I think sometimes it almost worked, I know I felt something weird, but it never did. The poor bastards always died.</p><p>I’m lucky they never did it to Eddie. I lived in fucking terror of that. Sometimes I dream that they did.</p><p>God, Eddie. They couldn’t hurt him the same way they could hurt me, but Brenner figured out Eddie’s fire thing was linked to his feelings. Knew he was anxious and had allergies and shit—he had access to Eddie’s medical history, his previous psychiatric evaluations from school (because the little fucker went to counseling religiously of course). Knew all of this, but threw him into high-stress shit, anyway. Or drugged him with hallucinogenics. You give a guy with anxiety hallucinogenics, he’s not going to react to what he sees with perfect tranquility.</p><p>There’s this one time I remember—I was waiting for Eddie to come back, and for my vocal cords to grow back because I mouthed off again. There wasn’t much to do but to try and sleep, so I was napping. Then I felt someone shaking me awake, and I woke up and almost punched them, because the last time someone did that I got dragged off for late-night bullshit surgery. But it was Eddie, and he was so fucking relieved to see me, and so fucking sad that I couldn’t really talk back just yet beyond this little whisper, vocal cords were still patching themselves back up. I asked him anyway what happened.</p><p>“They told me you were dead,” he said.</p><p>I pulled up my shirt and pointed at the line across my stomach. It was barely even noticeable, it had healed that much. You’d never guess that a couple hours ago the contents of my stomach were being poked and prodded out in the open air. You’d never even guess I’d gotten anything cut out of me.</p><p>“Well, <i>yeah</i>, asshole, I know you heal fast,” he said. “But they were so insistent, and they gave me <i>something</i>, I was seeing so much shit. They even had papers. And a set of your fucking glasses. I just—”</p><p>He said nothing more, just hugged me. I hugged him back.</p><p>I’m writing all this by the light of the campfire, and I’m tempted to rip out these pages and toss them in, because they haven’t done me a lick of fucking good, remembering all the time we lost down there to Brenner and his fucking goons. But who else is going to talk about this? Sure as shit Brenner’s never going to see us as anything more than lab rats, and anything he or the other doctors wrote about us is just gonna be cold and dry as a nun’s pussy. But before those nine years, we had lives. We were on track to having pretty good lives. We could’ve been something.</p><p>--</p><p>Richie’s never eating Chinese food again. It’s going to be very hard to bite down on a fortune cookie without first being terrified that he’s going to be biting into <i>a severed finger</i>, like the one now flopping around like a dead fish in front of him.</p><p>It could be worse. It could be the strange, fetus-looking <i>thing</i> trying to crawl towards a horrified Stan—oh, no, that’s. That’s an eyeball that just burst out of that fortune cookie, everything has officially gone to shit, and that’s not taking into account the little fetus-bat things flying around, or the nightmare baby birds hatching out of the fortune cookies with, like, human teeth and sharp claws, trying to go for Mike.</p><p>“That fortune cookie’s looking at me!” Richie shouts, backing up against Mike.</p><p>“<i>Now</i> do you think I was fucking with you?” Mike snaps.</p><p>“Fuck you!” Richie says, trying to bat the dead baby bird things away from his friend. One of them manages to score on his arm, digging in deep and dragging its claw along his skin, and Richie curses as he slaps it dead like he would to a fly. Oh, fuck, this is going to make it into his nightmares. His arm is already beginning to knit itself back together, so there’s a plus.</p><p>“Fuckfuckfuck<i>fuck!</i>” someone yells. It takes Richie a second to realize it’s Eddie, surrounded by burned fingers and sickly rats with foam coming out of their mouths, and he’s just about to run to his side when the dead bird fetuses go for <i>him</i>, driving him back towards the wall. “Rich, Richie—”</p><p>“I got him!” Ben calls, darting to Eddie’s side and pulling him behind him. He stomps down, and then turns green. “Oh, that’s fucked up.”</p><p>Bill shoots the fish in the tank a look, and then gags. Richie can’t blame him. Severed, rotting heads are the furthest thing from pretty koi fish that you can get.</p><p>Bev’s chair scoots back, her eyes wide and frightened as she points at the table. “What the <i>fuck</i>,” she says.</p><p>Richie follows the line of her finger. Black ooze is bubbling out of the fortune cookies, and they erupt like small volcanoes. <i>Pop, pop, pop.</i> The black ooze spreads across the table, sizzling all the while, and Bev makes a small, horrified noise.</p><p>And all the fucking while, under the screaming and the panicked cursing and the dead babies wailing, Richie can hear Eddie saying <i>oh god no oh god not now not now not now</i>.</p><p>God, no. God, not <i>now</i>.</p><p>“Eddie!” he shouts, desperately trying to catch Eddie’s attention. It’s at that moment that something leaps from the table to catch him full in the face, and Richie screams more in shock than anything, even as he feels claws starting to dig into his cheeks. Is that afterbirth effluvia getting in his mouth, or sewer water? God knows what, but suddenly he feels hands on his face ripping the damn thing off him.</p><p>“Oh, fuck,” says Mike. “You okay?”</p><p>“It’ll heal,” says Richie, touching his jawline. He doesn’t even want to think about what he fucking looks like right now.</p><p>And then the table goes up in flames.</p><p>Bev says, “Is this It?!” in shock, backing up as the fire spreads across the table. Stan and Bill bolt for the fire extinguisher at nearly the exact same time.</p><p>Oh, fuck. “Okay, move!” Richie says to Mike, and Mike’s too surprised to protest as Richie shoves past him, vaulting over the burning table (oh, god, it fucking hurts, he should’ve just moved around it, <i>ow</i>) and pushing a shocked Ben to the side to grab hold of a near-catatonic Eddie’s arms, avoiding his burning hands.</p><p>“Eddie,” he says, “Eds, Eddie, hey, hey, come on, look at me, look at me. Don’t look at that, forget that. Hey.” He pats Eddie’s cheek, hard enough that Eddie hisses out a curse, his eyes snapping to meet Richie’s. “Look at me,” Richie says, half-begging now. He can hear either Stan or Bill turning on the fire extinguisher, Bev yelling something about blood in horror, Mike yelling something about reality, but Eddie is his priority right now. “Keep your eyes on me, okay?”</p><p>Eddie nods, his breath a harsh, shaky thing.</p><p>“Okay,” says Richie. “Breathe with me. Can you do that? It’s easy, watch.” He breathes in, holds for three seconds, then breathes out again. “In, three, out. In, three, out. That’s good, Eddie, you got it. Just keep breathing.”</p><p>“It’s not real,” Stan’s chanting desperately, “it’s not real, it’s not real, it’s not real—”</p><p>“Is everything all right?” their hostess’s voice cuts in, and Richie looks away from Eddie to see one very confused woman staring at them. <i>Why isn’t she freaking out?</i> Richie thinks, before he glances back at the table and sucks in a horrified breath.</p><p>The table is covered in blood, and still smouldering in places. The fire extinguisher is dripping <i>blood</i> from its nozzle, and Bill, who’s holding it, looks positively ready to throw up on somebody. But just under this image is—just a table that’s not even burning, that isn’t even covered in white foam. Richie blinks, and the image of the undamaged table disappears, but the hostess doesn’t even seem to notice.</p><p>Of course she wouldn’t. She’s from Derry. She can’t see what’s right in front of her. All she can see are seven fully-grown adults freaking out over what looks like <i>nothing</i>.</p><p>Eddie says, “Rich? Should we run?”</p><p>“I don’t think she even notices there’s any fire,” Richie says.</p><p>Bill says, “Yeah, uh—c-c-can we get the ch-ch-chuh-heck, please?”</p><p>--</p><p>
  <b>DISAPPEARED</b>
  <br/>
  <i>Episode 75: Richie Tozier and Eddie Kaspbrak</i>
</p><p><b>Thad Beaumont:</b> <i>[narrating]</i> When I asked Miss Huang if she knew Richie Tozier, she gave me a surprising answer.</p><p><b>Colleen Huang:</b> Yeah, I knew of Tozier, but we never really talked to each other. I brought Eddie on a date to one of the fundraisers he was doing with a bunch of other amateur comedians, and Eddie seemed <i>really</i> into it. Or, well, not the other comedians, just Tozier. <i>[a mirthless, sorrowful laugh]</i> He liked the guy. I don’t know why. He didn’t know why either, just told me something about him got his attention. I hope Tozier’s okay too, wherever he’s gone.</p><p><b>TB:</b> <i>[narrating]</i> Same thing with the Toziers.</p><p><b>Maggie Tozier:</b> Eddie Kaspbrak? That name sounds familiar.</p><p><b>Wentworth Tozier:</b> That’s the boy who disappeared after Richie did, right?</p><p><b>TB:</b> Did he and Richie ever know each other?</p><p><b>MT:</b> You know, I’m not sure? But I think—I think they did meet, once. Richie described a nice boy he partnered up with for a project in a class, but the boy withdrew from that course fast. I don’t know if Richie had any clue why. I think the boy’s name was Eddie? He stopped talking about him pretty fast, in any case, didn’t even remember him when I asked.</p><p><b>WT:</b> We’re a family with very bad memories. You can probably tell.</p><p><b>TB:</b> <i>[narrating]</i> On the surface, Eddie Kaspbrak and Richie Tozier could not seem more different—Kaspbrak was a business major who’d switched out of pre-med, with an allegedly overbearing mother and a reputation for a short fuse and an obsession with health. He was looking into internships at prestigious banks and investment firms, and according to Miss Huang, had meticulously narrowed down the possibilities to the most promising and beneficial to himself. Tozier was a film major who was quickly making his mark in comedy circles, had even planned on auditioning for <i>Saturday Night Live</i>, and by all accounts, while his parents were distant, they had a good relationship with each other. He made regular appearances at fundraisers and open mics, and had joined an improv group.</p><p>But their disappearances were startlingly similar: somehow, in the minutes between their classes, both Richie and Eddie seemed to simply vanish into thin air. One moment they were walking down the corridor, down the stairs, and the next, they were gone, never to make it to the next class. Their belongings were left behind in their respective dorms, which was key to ruling out the possibility that they had simply dropped out, or run away. Surely, if Eddie Kaspbrak meant to run, he would have brought along his inhaler. No one could recall if either man had made enemies, although one classmate claims that in the one class they used to share, Kaspbrak and Tozier used to bicker loudly enough to disturb all the other classmates. Abduction was a remote possibility—there were security cameras planted everywhere on campus, an abduction would have been very hard to pull off.</p><p>It didn’t help that once the police got involved, both cases were—not very well-handled, to put it lightly.</p><p><b>Stuart Wyman:</b> The cops were fucking useless. So was the college. That’s the truth.</p><p><b>TB:</b> <i>[narrating]</i> That’s Stuart Wyman, one of Richie’s friends in his improv group, now a stand-up comedian with both a long and acclaimed run in the Upright Citizens Brigade and a medical degree.</p><p><b>SW:</b> From day fucking one, from the <i>moment</i> Richie disappeared? Nothing but goddamn fuck-ups. The cops somehow got on this angle that Richie just broke under the pressure and ran, but—fuck, they never even <i>knew</i> the guy, y’know? Richie isn’t the type to break under pressure. We used to joke he was a fucking masochist, because he was thinking about doing a double-major and preparing to audition for fucking SNL, of all things. He fucking thrived when he loved the work, and man, he <i>loved</i> the work. He wouldn’t have run out. Something happened to him.</p><p><b>TB:</b> What do you think that something is?</p><p><b>SW:</b> That’s the thing. I don’t know. The most illegal thing Richie ever really did was get so drunk he sang Jefferson Starship at the top of his lungs. He got arrested for disturbing the peace. I guess the weed too, but it was college, man, everybody smoked some weed at least once. Other than that, Richie was just a funny guy, he liked making people laugh. Yeah, sometimes he got fucking annoying, but that was the price of being friends with him. The cops, they thought he was engaged in <i>illegal activity</i>, but what the fuck do they know? Fuckers.</p><p>--</p><p>A kid calls, “Hey, Mr. Denbrough,” and Eddie jumps so badly out of shock that his palms begin to smoke. But Richie’s arm wraps around his torso, and Eddie breathes out slowly, leans against his husband’s side. <i>Just a kid,</i> he tells himself, <i>just a kid.</i> He turns to look anyway, along with the other Losers, as Bill freezes in place, slowly turns and bends down to meet the kid’s eyes.</p><p>“Yeah, that’s me,” he says, with an <i>aw, shucks</i> smile, the picture of an all-American writer.</p><p>The kid grins. “The fun’s just beginning,” he says, and Eddie’s stomach drops out onto the floor. Richie steps in front of him, his arm out to keep the kid away from Eddie.</p><p>“Oh,” says Bill, his smile a frozen rictus on his face.</p><p>The kid’s grin drops, and he frowns at Bill. “You okay there?” he asks. “It’s from your newest book. I stole my dad’s copy, and I thought it was really neat.” He’s shy, all of a sudden, kicking at the floor with the toe of his shoe, and Eddie feels the knot in his stomach begin to loosen. Just a kid. Just a really enthusiastic kid who can’t read the room. “Could you sign something for me, Mr. Denbrough? Please?”</p><p>“I, uh,” says Bill, then he looks back at the Losers, sighs, and pulls out a business card and a pen from the pockets of his plaid flannel. He scrawls his signature across the back of the card with a flourish, then hands it back to the kid. “Here you go,” he says. “Stay out of the sewers, okay?”</p><p>The kid blinks at him as he tucks the card away. “Okay!” he says, clearly dismissing this piece of advice as a total non-sequitur, and flouncing off to rejoin his embarrassed parents and his sister.</p><p>Bill watches the kid go, his shoulders slumped like he’s carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. Eddie blinks, and he’s looking at Bill at thirteen, clutching onto Georgie’s tattered yellow raincoat and crying. <i>Georgie,</i> god. How could he forget Georgie? Little Georgie splashing through the puddles, laughing as mud splattered his boots. Little Georgie, dead for twenty-seven years now, because the clown had killed him.</p><p>He blinks again, and it’s just Bill watching the kid and his family go.</p><p>“Fuck,” says Richie. “For a second I thought—”</p><p>“—that he wasn’t actually a kid?” Eddie completes. “Yeah. Same here.”</p><p>“On the one hand, it’s a little creepy you two can do that,” says Bev, “but on the other hand, um.”</p><p>Ben nods. “<i>The fun’s just beginning</i>,” he says, and shakes his head. “Weird thing to say to a guy, right off the bat.”</p><p>“Didn’t you realize it was a line from your book when you heard it?” Mike asks, as they start walking out of the restaurant and into the parking lot.</p><p>“I’ve written s-s-<i>seven books</i>,” says Bill. “I can’t r-r-reh-remember all the details of all seven.”</p><p>“Hack!” Richie says. “Fuckin’ <i>hack.</i>”</p><p>“Which reminds me, I was going to ask,” says Stan, “Richie, Eddie? <i>What the fuck was that.</i>”</p><p>Eddie stops out in front of the sidewalk, shoving his hands into his pockets. Richie’s pressed to his side, and just his presence helps him breathe a little easier. “What was what?” he asks, knowing damn well what Stanley means—the smoking palms, the fire, the way Richie’s arm was sliced open by one of Its monsters and then <i>burned</i> by fire but now looks completely fine, like nothing ever happened to it.</p><p>“The fire? The healing?” Stan says.</p><p>Bev’s phone rings, and her brow furrows in confusion as she tugs it out. She pulls away from them to take it, and after a moment’s hesitation, Ben steps in her direction, near enough that she can just pull him in if she needs him, but far enough to keep space between them.</p><p>“It’s like Mike said, we all got changed by It,” Eddie points out. “Mine’s just—not as controllable.” He sighs. “It was an accident, I <i>swear.</i>”</p><p>“You were doing pretty okay on that front when we were kids,” Mike says. “This is the first time I’ve ever seen you set fire to something without meaning to—and I do believe,” he adds, when Richie bristles, “that you didn’t mean to.” He sighs. “Anyway, right now, I need to show you all something—”</p><p>“Fuck no,” says Richie. “More than we already saw? Fuck no. Fuck that, Eddie and I are <i>leaving.</i>”</p><p>“You told us, when you called, that you just wanted us to come hear you out,” says Eddie. “We’ve heard you out! More than that, we nearly fucking <i>died</i>. You lied to us—”</p><p>“I didn’t <i>lie</i> to you—” Mike starts.</p><p>“By omission!” Eddie snaps. “That’s not okay!”</p><p>“Yeah, first thing out of your mouth should’ve been, <i>hey, you wanna come back to Derry, get yourselves exposed and your husband fucking murdered,</i>” says Richie, “because then I would’ve said <i>no</i>.”</p><p>“Exposed?” Bill says, suddenly, and goddammit, of course Bill would catch that. He’s a writer, words are his bread and butter, and when he’s not in denial, he can be quick on the uptake. “Wh-Why would you w-w-worry about b-b-buh-being exposed?”</p><p>The words bubble up in Eddie’s throat, the old desire to tell Bill swimming back up to the surface. Eddie wrestles it down, and shakes his head. “We’re leaving,” he says, pulling Richie back. “We have to go. The longer we stay here, the more dangerous it gets.”</p><p>“We already <i>are</i> in danger!” Mike says, stepping forward. “You don’t understand, if we don’t finish It now, more people <i>will</i> die. We made a <i>promise</i>.”</p><p>“Who gives a shit?” Richie asks, his voice like a whip crack. “Let’s unmake that promise, then. I don’t give a single flying <i>fuck</i> what happens to Derry—let everyone in this fucking town get eaten, for all I care. Nobody would give a shit for <i>us</i>, I remember that much now after two fucking hours. Hell, I know for a fact this town would fucking feed me and Eddie to the clown if it could. So <i>fuck this.</i>” He turns away, stomping back to the car, a black thundercloud hanging over his head.</p><p>Eddie looks back at Mike, and his heart wrenches at the devastation written clear across his face. “Mike,” he starts.</p><p>“Please, Eddie,” Mike says, stepping closer, as if about to plead.</p><p>“Listen,” says Eddie, “we stay, we die, that’s it?” He puts his hands on Mike’s shoulders, says, “I’m going with Richie. We’re going back to the townhouse, getting our stuff, and then we’re leaving town. We <i>have to</i>, and not just because of It.”</p><p>“What are you talking about?” Mike asks.</p><p>“I can’t tell you,” says Eddie, “but I am so, so fucking sorry, all right?” Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Stan and Bill going towards Bev, who’s sitting down hard now on the pavement, like she’s just been given the worst news of her life. He watches her lean against Ben and start crying, sees Ben gently, loosely wrap an arm around her torso. “Good luck,” says Eddie, sincerely, letting go and turning away to join Richie in the car.</p><p>--</p><p>Richie grabs his duffel bag first. When he runs down the steps, Ben, Bev and Stan are already walking through the doors, all three of them looking particularly haunted and worried. He doesn’t bother, instead running outside towards the car and tossing his bag into the trunk, then slamming it down.</p><p>It’s when he walks back inside that he hears Bev say, “—saw you slit your wrists in the bathtub.”</p><p>“Was that—” Stan starts, sounding horrified.</p><p>Richie turns to poke his head into the minibar, and says, “Hey, you guys wanna hold this discussion in the car?”</p><p>“This isn’t a car discussion, Richie,” Ben says.</p><p>Bev looks up at Richie, and he can see the tear tracks running down her face in the yellow lamplight. She says, “And I saw <i>you</i>. On a gurney, screaming and crying. Was—Was that what you and Eddie were up to? Was that what you were running from?”</p><p>A cold stone drops into the pit of Richie’s stomach. “How did you know?” he asks.</p><p>Bev shakes her head, then pulls out a packet of cigarettes, her hands shaking as she fumbles with a stick. It’s Stan, then, who says, “She saw—Rich, she saw what I was planning to do. That’s what she got: visions.”</p><p>“I never knew,” she says. “I thought—I thought I was just having nightmares. Really vivid ones. And now this.”</p><p>Ben says nothing, but his eyes go soft and sad, and his hand rests on her shoulder, squeezing gently. It’s only then that he says, “Do you need a place to lie low, for a while? I can call someone, he’ll never know where to find you.”</p><p>Bev goes still for a moment, her eyes briefly glazing over, before she sucks in a horrified breath and shakes her head. “No,” she says. “No, you can’t, he’ll <i>kill you</i>.”</p><p>“Who’ll kill Ben?” Richie asks. “What the fuck is going on? Stan, what the hell were you planning to do, kill yourself or something?”</p><p>“That’s about right,” says Stan.</p><p>Richie stares at him. “<i>What the goddamn fuck.</i>”</p><p>Something <i>thuds</i> on the landing, loudly enough that Richie startles and whips around. It’s just Eddie, though, saying, “Okay, I’ve got everything but the toiletry bag, did you put that in your duffel bag or what, Rich?”</p><p>“Um,” says Richie.</p><p>“Did you <i>forget</i> again?” Eddie huffs.</p><p>Richie points at Stan, because someone’s gotta go under the bus of Eddie’s wrath and it sure as shit won’t be Richie, and says, “Stan tried to kill himself and someone’s gonna kill Ben, according to Bev.”</p><p>“We <i>all</i> die,” says Beverly, tears rolling down her cheeks. “I’ve seen us all die.”</p><p>“<i>What the fuck,</i>” says Eddie.</p><p>“Yeah, I think we oughta sit down for this,” says Richie. “And get thoroughly drunk.”</p><p>--</p><p>“What I don’t get,” says Eddie, a little buzzed after the shot and Bev’s explanation, “is—okay, is that your thing? Is that what fighting It got you, just—the ability to see us all die?”</p><p>“Yeah, that’s a fucked-up thing to drop on someone,” says Richie. He’s poured two shots of whiskey down his throat by now, and by the way he’s gripping that whiskey bottle, Eddie guesses more will be coming soon.</p><p>Bev wipes a tear off her cheek, says, “Every night since the first time we fought It, I dream about—about all of us.” She nods to Stan, says, “You’re always the first one to go. Because—”</p><p>“—I’m too scared to go back,” Stan completes, “without someone pushing me to go.”</p><p>“I’ve had these nightmares,” she says, “of—of people in pain, people dying, people—”</p><p>“So you have nightmares,” says Eddie, pacing. “I have nightmares. Richie has nightmares. It doesn’t always mean your visions are true.”</p><p>“I have other visions,” says Beverly. “Just—small ones, but <i>true</i>.” She fumbles in her jacket for a pack of cigarettes, her hands shaking as she tries to pull out a stick. “I saw you getting married to your wife,” she tells Stan. “Her hair’s blonde and she wore it in a bun, she was wearing a white mermaid gown, you shattered a glass under your foot right before you kissed her.”</p><p>Stan sucks in a breath, says, “That’s—She <i>was</i> in a mermaid gown.”</p><p>Beverly turns to Ben and says, “Your mother was wearing a yellow sundress and a red wig at your graduation, wasn’t she? And she cried when you got your diploma. I remember—I remember wondering who she was, and why I felt so, so sad for her, when she was so happy.”</p><p>Ben nods, his eyes a little wet. “She was the happiest I ever saw her,” he says. “She—She died three years after.”</p><p>Bev’s face softens, and she reaches her hand across to take Ben’s and squeeze, gently. “I’m sorry,” she says.</p><p>“Can we pass on that?” Richie says. “Because I don’t want you blurting out either my or Eddie’s most embarrassing moments.” His hand shakes as he tosses back the shot of whiskey, and Eddie wonders suddenly what Bev might’ve seen, of the two of them.</p><p>“Okay, but what’s so special about your nightmares?” Eddie cuts in, a little desperate now. “Okay, you do have visions, but why are we freaking out about your nightmares? Besides the whole, we all die in them, type of thing.”</p><p>“The thing is,” says Bev, “none of it is <i>peaceful</i>.” She looks at Stan again, and says, “Stan’s was the most peaceful. That—That probably says something, I think, about the rest of us.” Her eyes slant towards Eddie, and for a moment Eddie wonders what she saw for him: a fiery death, or something worse than that. “Sometimes the circumstances change,” she says, “but we all die young. We don’t make it another ten years.”</p><p>“<i>Jesus,</i>” says Eddie, pulling away from Richie to run his hands through his hair and pace.</p><p>“We could just wait a year,” says Richie. “Wait for It to sleep, then kill it while it’s sleeping.”</p><p>“That’s not g-g-going to work,” comes Bill’s voice from the hallway, and Eddie can’t help but look at him, and Mike right behind him. For all that he’s maybe one of the shorter Losers, Eddie still can’t help but see him standing tall. “It goes b-b-b-back to sleep, and we’ll f-f-forget again.” He steps closer to Bev, kneels next to her, and says, “Am I right, Bev? Stan?”</p><p>“Wait,” says Richie, “why would Stan and Bev know? What’s so special about them?”</p><p>But the answer is already spinning through Eddie’s head: the flute lady bent over Stan, her mouth trying to suck his face off, and Bev floating in the air, her eyes white and blank, her head tilted upward.</p><p>“The Deadlights,” Mike says.</p><p>“Th-They were the only ones who got c-cuh-caught in the Deadlights that day,” says Bill.</p><p>Beverly’s hands shake as she pulls out a cigarette, plants it in her mouth, and fumbles with her lighter. It takes her three tries to flick it on, the flame touching the tip of her cigarette.</p><p>“We were all touched by It,” Mike’s saying once more, “<i>changed</i> deep down, like an infection, or a—a virus.”</p><p>Okay, no, Eddie cannot handle this right now. He marches over towards Richie, grabs a shot glass, and pours himself a shot. As soon as it’s down his gullet, he says, “Mike. Please. For the love of fucking god do <i>not</i> say it like that.”</p><p>“Sort of how it works, though,” Stan points out.</p><p>“You do not get to fucking talk,” Eddie says.</p><p>“Oh, no, I do get to fucking talk, you think you’re special?” Stan asks. “Just because you managed to set a table on fire? I have been able to talk to birds since 1989, that’s why they’ve been following me around, to answer the question you didn’t ask at the Jade. We <i>all</i> got something out of that whole mess, not just me and Bev, although we got the shitty visions out of it.” He nods to Richie, and says, “I thought you didn’t, because you never said shit-all, but your arm was fucking burned and cut up and yet it looks as fine as ever.”</p><p>“I didn’t notice,” says Richie, lying baldly.</p><p>“Well, if we’re talking about what we’ve been able to do since 1989,” Ben says, “I can—sort of see layouts in my head. Once I step inside a building, I know where I am in it, I know where to go.” He nods to Eddie. “So yeah, Eddie, I do always know where the bathroom is.”</p><p>“That sounds way more useful than just setting shit on fire,” says Eddie, enviously.</p><p>“Sometimes when I talk to people I can t-t-talk them a-around to shit th-th-they usually w-wouldn’t do,” says Bill. He pauses, then says, “It’s not—I d-d-d-don’t use it for much more than getting p-p-puh-pizza.”</p><p>“If I had that,” says Richie, quietly, “I know what I’d use it for.”</p><p>Eddie rolls his eyes. “No, you wouldn’t,” he murmurs, “you like haggling too much.” It’s a talent Eddie knows Richie inherited from his mom, the ability to ruthlessly argue down a price until it fits within their budget, and it’s come in handy so many times over the years.</p><p>Mike’s talking again, saying, “We got our abilities out of fighting It, but the flipside is, if we don’t finish the fight here and now, we <i>will</i> all die. Everything Bev and Stan see will come to pass. It very nearly did, for Stan.”</p><p>“We could just kick the can twenty-seven years down the road,” says Richie.</p><p>“We’ll be seventy years old, asshole,” says Eddie, leaning against him, resting his fingers over the inside of Richie’s elbow. “Anyway, you heard Bev. We light out of town, we die in ten years and in a very gruesome way. And, you know, I <i>really</i> don’t want to die gruesomely, and I’m pretty sure you don’t want to go that way either.”</p><p>“Could be like Bonnie and Clyde,” Richie muses. “Quick, at least.”</p><p>Eddie knocks his knee against Richie’s. “Nobody’s ending up like fucking Bonnie and Clyde,” he says. “I’m not getting shot to death and neither are you.”</p><p>“No, instead we’re just gonna be devoured by the killer clown we completely forgot about,” Richie says.</p><p>“I mean, we beat It once, we could do it again,” Eddie says.</p><p>“Yes, <i>exactly</i>,” says Mike, and Eddie blinks and looks at him. He had—actually forgotten, for a second, that other people were in the room too. He and Richie may be, he reflects, a tiny bit codependent on each other.</p><p>“I’ve seen w-wh-wh-what he’s talking about,” Bill says, “and it’s all true. It’s the o-only way.” He looks around at them all, and Eddie finds himself straightening his spine a little, trying to seem braver. Richie doesn’t try to change anything at all, but instead just takes another shot. “If we want this ritual to work,” Bill says, “we have to r-r-r-remember.”</p><p>“Remember <i>what?</i>” Richie asks.</p><p>--</p><p>
  <i>From the diary of Richie Tozier:</i>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">August 21, 2006</span>
</p><p>Dreamed again. Don’t remember much about it, though, but I know it’s different from the usual nightmare. After those nightmares I don’t feel like puking, but after this one I got hit with nausea so bad I couldn’t keep dinner down. I woke Eddie up, freaked him out a little, but we’re both pretty sure now it was just a really bad nightmare.</p><p>It’s weird, though. All I remember of it is just this red balloon.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. like i'm running out of time</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>title is from Arctic Monkeys' "Why'd You Only Call Me When You're High?"</p><p><b>content warning:</b> canon-typical horror. drug use. author rips off the dinosaur scene in the book for this chapter. mentions of parental abuse (Sonia Kaspbrak) and Eddie's complicated feelings about her. discussion of kidnapping and medical trauma and experimentation. somewhat RPF at the end with Buzzfeed Unsolved, but like, an in-universe version where Shane and Ryan are discussing an unsolved disappearance.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The Barrens is as green and verdant as it always was, back in the day. Probably even greener now, strangely enough. As Richie stumbles through the bushes behind the other Losers, he reaches for Eddie’s sleeve and says, “Remember when we were fifteen, and we were hiding from, from, whatsisname again? Dipshit with the buzz cut and the squint?”</p><p>“Jeff Edgecombe, yeah, I remember him,” says Eddie. “Fucking asshole. I swear, it’s like the second Bowers was out of the picture there was this flood of shitheels trying to cram themselves into the vacuum he left behind.”</p><p>“We hid here,” says Richie. “I don’t remember where, but it was somewhere around here.”</p><p>Ben stops in place, then says, full of wonder, “This is where we came. After the rock fight.”</p><p>Bev sucks in a breath, and says, “The clubhouse!”</p><p>“Yeah,” says Stan, snapping his fingers, “yeah, you built that for us, I remember now.”</p><p>“One time,” says Richie, dreamily, the memories sliding back into place as though his brain had saved spaces for them, “we got so fucking high I swear to god I think we saw dinosaurs.” He pauses, frowns, and says, “Or that was just me and Mike, ‘cause the rest of you all pussied out right before the big finish.”</p><p>“We were going to suffocate in the smoke!” Eddie huffs.</p><p>“<em>Pussied out,</em>” says Richie.</p><p>“Oh, fuck you too, Rich,” says Eddie. “Anyway, where is it now?”</p><p>“Hatch has gotta be around here somewhere,” Ben murmurs, stomping around over the soil. The sole of his boot hits something that sounds far more wooden than the ground typically does, and he smiles triumphantly and looks up. “Hey, guys! I think I—”</p><p>The hatch gives way. Ben disappears from view so suddenly that Richie startles, his breath catching in his throat. For the briefest, most horrible moment, Richie half thinks It is waiting for them down there in the clubhouse, and his heart rate picks up speed at the thought of it.</p><p>“—found it,” Ben finishes, as they all scramble up to look down at him. He looks fine, none the worse for wear for his tumble, and Richie can’t help but breathe a sigh of relief. Christ, nothing screams traumatized like immediately catastrophizing a nanosecond after a minor fall. “I’m okay!”</p><p>Richie goes last as they all go down into the clubhouse, casting a nervous glance around the Barrens and shoving his hands into his pocket. Underground has never spelled good things for him or Eddie, but Richie personally has a shitload of problems about it. He does not imagine this will be a fun time for him.</p><p>The anxiety lurking in the back of his brain dissipates, however, when he sets foot into the clubhouse proper, and in its place a sense of, of <em>love</em> and <em>safety</em> falls over him like a worn, well-loved blanket he thought he’d never see again. Here he is again, in the place where he made some of his best memories.</p><p>He ducks his head so as to not get hit by a low beam. “Shit,” he says, wondering, “we were so fucking <em>tiny</em>.”</p><p>“And insane,” says Eddie, knocking his knuckles against a pillar. “This could’ve been such a safety hazard if Ben wasn’t the one building it.”</p><p>“Uh, thanks,” says Ben. “I do remember you were going on a lot about safety codes, though.”</p><p>“And in retrospect you could’ve done so much worse,” says Eddie. “I mean, shit, look at this, a thirteen-year-old built this?”</p><p>“Yeah, I g-g-get what you m-mmm-mean,” says Bill. “It looks almost p-p-pruh-prof-professionally done, Ben.”</p><p>“I mean, I had some help from my mom sometimes,” Ben says, sheepishly rubbing the back of his neck and blushing fiercely. Bev, beside him, smiles and bumps his side companionably with her elbow, and when their eyes meet it’s as though the air around them seems to grow heavy with promise. Richie immediately looks away, his eyes catching on Stan grabbing hold of a random can and holding it up for their inspection.</p><p>“Hey guys,” says Stan, taking the tape off the lid, pulling the lid off and passing out shower caps. “Put your shower caps on.”</p><p>Richie groans. “Oh, god, is it the spiders <em>again</em>?” he asks. “I told you before, Stanley, we’re not afraid of fucking <em>spiders</em>. Plus, those things have been in there like, twenty-seven years.”</p><p>“In an airtight container,” says Stan.</p><p>“That reminds me, I’d love to borrow that container,” says Mike, climbing up only to pull the hatch door closed. “For ritualistic purposes, you understand.”</p><p>“Not Cloutier again,” Richie grouses. “No thanks to the shower cap, Stan. Anyway, it’s not like anyone else is pulling them—”</p><p>He stops in his tracks as he looks around, seeing the rest of the Losers tugging their ancient shower caps on. Beverly tucks her hair underneath the elastic band, and says, “Mike, why are we down here?”</p><p>“Remember when we got high so we could have visions?” Mike asks. “Something like that.”</p><p>“I feel like,” says Eddie, after a moment, “me trying to get high in a small wooden space with all of you is not going to end well for anyone.” He gets up, and says, “I’ll just sit up there—”</p><p>“It’s fine,” Mike quickly assures him. “Bill and I already went through this—”</p><p>“Wait,” Ben says, “you and Bill got <em>high</em>?”</p><p>“—and if anything even starts to go wrong, we’ll come down and pull you guys out,” Mike finishes. “But it shouldn’t go wrong. I checked, ayahuasca dampens our abilities. You won’t start a fire down here, Eddie.”</p><p>Richie’s blood runs cold. He knows Mike’s trying to reassure him, but—there’s not a lot of drugs that can dampen their abilities. Richie keeps a list of the ones that do, and it’s a far more comprehensive one than Eddie’s, because Brenner and his ilk liked having a guinea pig who could heal from anything they did to him in a matter of minutes. There’d been a week, maybe a week and a half, where they’d given him drugs in an effort to see what effects they had and what happened if he overdosed. He has—It’s a comprehensive list.</p><p>He doesn’t want to stay here. He really doesn’t. He wants to climb back out and sit in the fresh air and not think about—about Pennywise or smoke hole ceremonies (they were such stupid <em>kids</em>) or Brenner, he wants to get Eddie and head out again, find a new town to try and settle down in.</p><p>But he looks at Eddie, who’s twisting his fingers in his sleeves, and Richie is an old hat at shoving the trauma down, at this point.</p><p>“You know, Eds,” he drawls, “if you wanted to hold my hand so bad you could’ve just said so.”</p><p>“If I want to hold your hand I could hold your hand any time, that’s why we’re <em>married</em>,” Eddie snipes back, head snapping up so he can glare up at Richie. Beyond them, Mike’s putting something in the now-empty container, something that looks suspiciously like, yeah, drugs.</p><p>“I thought we got married ‘cause my ass was hot and you wanted to keep tapping it,” says Richie.</p><p>“Get me fucking out of here,” says Stan. “I don’t give a shit about the ritual, but I don’t want to know what Richie and Eddie do in bed to each other.”</p><p>“That’s <em>homophobic,</em> Stan,” says Richie.</p><p>“Yeah, that’s shitty,” Eddie chimes in. “Just ‘cause we’re <em>gay</em>, huh, you don’t wanna know shit about how we live?”</p><p>“I don’t want to know how you two fuck!” Stan huffs, throwing his hands up in the air. “Congratulations on getting married, I’m so glad you finally got your shit together, but I want to hear <em>nothing</em> about how hot you find each other’s asses!”</p><p>“Please,” says Beverly. “Shut the fuck up.”</p><p>Ben takes out a lighter from his jacket pocket, and says, “Okay, let’s just get this over with now.”</p><p>“G-G-Godspeed,” says Bill, sympathetically, but with no small hint of relief. Mike is already half-out of the clubhouse, and he helps Bill up the steps and shuts the hatch closed. It gets—well, not <em>dark</em>, exactly, because there are still slats and holes where the light shines through. Ben touches his lighter to the stuff inside the container, then pushes it toward the center of the clubhouse and says, “So, uh, how long does it take?”</p><p>“No idea,” says Stan. “I only ever tried weed, and that was one time.”</p><p>“I never smoked anything harder than a cigarette,” says Beverly. Her hands rub absently over her forearms, and she says, “And my husband is—not a huge fan of smoking.”</p><p>Richie says nothing. Not about the comprehensive mental list of chemical substances that materially affect powers, not about how he got it, nothing. Instead he hitches himself closer to Eddie, takes hold of his hand, tries to calm the racing pace of his heart.</p><p>Eddie rests his head against Richie’s shoulder, and says, “I think maybe a few minutes. Don’t let me set anything on fire, guys.”</p><p>“You’re not gonna set anything on fire,” says Richie. “Well. Anything that’s not my libido.”</p><p>“I should’ve brought earplugs instead of shower caps down here all those years ago,” Stan grumbles, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Don’t say it, Richie.”</p><p>Richie sticks his tongue out at Stan, who rolls his eyes back at him as the smoke curls up and out of the container, starts to fill the clubhouse.</p><p>Ben says, quietly, “Y’know, Eddie, I think I used to date this girl who had a picture of you back in college.”</p><p>Eddie pauses. “Short, black eyes, hair dyed brown-ish blonde, pink boots?” he asks.</p><p>“Yeah, Colleen Huang,” says Ben. “She was—nice.”</p><p>Richie squashes down the jealousy that creeps, ugly and terrible, into the back of his mind. He knows that Eddie had dated her because he hadn’t quite realized his type just yet. He knows Eddie loves him, or else they wouldn’t have gotten married. He <em>knows</em> all this, and he refuses to let the old green-eyed monster try to convince him otherwise, when Eddie is right here in an underground hole with him, holding his hand.</p><p>“She was,” Eddie agrees. “Is she okay now?”</p><p>“Yeah, last I checked she was a lawyer and everything,” says Ben. “The thing is, when I asked about you, she said you’d gone missing. Something about your mom?”</p><p>“Ma sent me to a psychiatric ward,” says Eddie, the lie rolling off his tongue with the ease of practice. By now they’re both very good at it, at telling half-truths and outright lies about where they’ve been. From what Richie knows, it <em>had</em> been Sonia Kaspbrak’s fault anyway that Eddie had ended up in Brenner’s clutches. “When I got out, I figured it was easier to just stay away from her. I met Richie again after that.”</p><p>“We’ve been together ever since,” Richie adds.</p><p>“For—what, exactly?” Stan asks. “Why would your mother send you off to a psych ward? She seemed more the type to try and grind you under her thumb.”</p><p>“I left her,” says Eddie. “Sided with Colleen against her. I think she thought being stuck in the psych ward would, I dunno, turn me back into her sweet son out of fear I’d go through that again, or something.”</p><p>In truth, Eddie had told Richie once while they were tangled up together in a motel room, Sonia Kaspbrak had sold her son out because he’d hit her with a double-whammy—he’d said he was gay (and had told his mother it was fine and he was taking meds and he was <em>still</em> her son), and when that conversation had spun into a fight, Eddie had set the table on fire by accident, his emotions running too high for him to rein the fire back in before his mother saw. “And you know what fucking hurts about it all?” Eddie had finished. “I <em>still</em> miss her. She was my mom and she fucking called those bastards in to take me away from her because she thought I was a danger and she just watched them take me and I <em>still</em> miss her, despite all that.”</p><p>“I got abducted right off the fucking campus,” Richie had said. “Fuckin’ camera caught me healing up. My parents—” Richie had stopped in his tracks, then settled his hand on Eddie’s hip, marveling in the warm, solid heat of him. Back then, like this, it had felt like they were the only two people in the world. “Mags would’ve loved you,” he said, quietly, “enough to make up for your mom.”</p><p>“I wish I could meet them,” Eddie had said.</p><p>“Me too,” Richie had said, then he had leaned in to kiss him, and they didn’t do any more talking that night.</p><p>Now Richie squeezes Eddie’s hand, only—it’s weird, because Eddie had been <em>right next to him</em>. Now he’s a foot away, and Bev and Ben and Stan are much further away too, their eyes turning red. Richie quickly scrambles towards Eddie, wondering: <em>is it just me or is this clubhouse getting bigger?</em> If he stands, will he bump his head on the ceiling?</p><p>Eddie reaches for him, scrambles into his lap, and says, “I don’t like this.”</p><p>“Yeah, me fucking neither,” Richie mutters. To the others, he says, “Anyone getting any visions yet? Bev? Stan? Haystack?”</p><p>“Nothing yet, but uh, the place is a lot bigger,” says Ben.</p><p>“It’s because we’re getting high,” says Stan.</p><p>“No, I mean it, it’s bigger,” says Ben. To demonstrate, he reaches a hand behind him and says, “I should be touching the wall right now if I’m just high and my perception’s being fucked with. I’m not touching a wall right now.”</p><p>Beverly coughs. “It’s fucking hot down here,” she says, but doesn’t take her jacket off, instead rubbing her hand restlessly over her forearm. Not for the first time, Richie wonders what she’s hiding under her sleeves.</p><p>“I’m taking bets, who’s leaving first?” Richie says. “Stan? You wanna get outta here? I promise I’ll only make fun of you a little bit for chickening out again.”</p><p>Stan, who’s staring at the ceiling with a look of horror on his face (the clubhouse is bigger now, so much bigger, the size of a mansion’s living room), quickly snaps his gaze back down towards Richie. “Yeah, no,” he says, his voice only shaking the slightest bit after he shoots looks at the others. The wonders of peer pressure, apparently. “I can manage just fine.”</p><p>“Bev?”</p><p>“No,” says Beverly, rubbing at her eyes now. “I’m going to finish this.”</p><p>“Ben?”</p><p>“I don’t like this either,” says Ben, “but we have to finish it this time, I think.”</p><p>“Eddie my love?”</p><p>Eddie looks at Richie, then sets his jaw. “I’m not leaving this time,” he says.</p><p>“You don’t have to prove anything,” says Richie, quietly, more serious than with the others. This is Eddie, after all, and maybe Richie wants to leave too, wants to get out of here because there’s a tiny part of his brain gibbering <em>we’re trapped we’re trapped we’ll never leave if we don’t go right fucking now</em>. But he won’t leave Eddie behind.</p><p>“This isn’t me proving something,” says Eddie. “You’re staying, so I’m staying. It’s as simple as that.” He squeezes Richie’s hand, his left drifting up to cup Richie’s cheek, presses their foreheads together, and says, “For better or for worse, remember?”</p><p>“For better or for worse,” Richie echoes. Then he blinks. “Uh, so, don’t look now, but I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore, hon.”</p><p>“Aw, fuck,” says Eddie, rolling away, and suddenly the five of them are no longer in the clubhouse. They’re still in the Barrens, yes, but it’s much more lush than it had been before, greener and more vibrant and nowhere <em>near</em> barren. It hadn’t been barren ten minutes ago, sure, but compared to <em>this</em>—</p><p>“Is this what you and Mike saw?” Stan asks, looking up and around while addressing Richie, taking out a set of dinky little old-man glasses like that’s somehow going to let him see the clubhouse again and not the forest. He looks like he’s about ready to throw up, and Richie starts toward him before Beverly catches Stanley’s arm. “This can’t be real. This <em>cannot</em> be real. Are those—”</p><p>“Oh, boy, the dinosaur vision again,” says Richie. “Or not a vision. Whichever.”</p><p>“<em>Time travel is not fucking real</em>,” says Stanley, his voice hitting a familiarly high pitch. Yeah, it’s the same one he used whenever Richie got particularly asshole-ish, and Richie answers by giving him a shrug, because—well, this time, he’s not being an asshole on purpose. “Any moment now Bill is going to come down and get us out of here, probably. You know what he’s like.”</p><p>“I think Bill would be a little hard-pressed to find us at the moment,” Ben says, traipsing around, pushing the leaves of a gigantic fern out of the way. “On account of the fact that Richie’s right, sort of. We’re high, but we’re <em>here</em>, too.”</p><p>“Derry magic,” says Richie, wiggling his fingers.</p><p>“Cool, great,” says Eddie, with a dazed look on his face.</p><p>Ben steps back from the fern, frowning, and says, “Does anyone hear that?”</p><p>“Hear what?” Stan asks.</p><p>“The river,” says Ben. “It’s a hell of a lot louder than it was five minutes ago.” He holds his hand up before Richie can say something, and says, “Or a couple billion years ago, yes, Richie, we get it.”</p><p>And that’s the word, isn’t it, the word he and Mike had gotten all those years ago? <em>Ago</em>, as in several million years ago, if not several <em>billion</em>, as in once upon a time, long, long ago, when humanity didn’t even <em>exist</em> and wouldn’t for several millennia yet. This is some unimaginable past long before the ice age, well before mammals ruled the world, and the river that will one day be the Kenduskeag is roaring beyond them.</p><p>“I hear it too,” Bev confirms, turning around. “It’s coming from around—this way, I think?”</p><p>“Sort of the right way,” says Eddie, standing up now and brushing his pants off, shaking his head as if trying to shake the disorientation. He looks down at his hands, frowns, and sticks them into his pockets. “It’s more to the west. Stick together.”</p><p>Richie grabs hold of Stan this time, then Ben’s very well-defined bicep. What, he’s <em>married</em>, and anyway Eddie had been checking Ben out too at the dinner. Ben takes hold of Bev’s hand, and Bev catches the end of Eddie’s sleeve, pulling his hand out of his pocket. There’s no fire, and suddenly Richie realizes: if something happens while they’re here, in the past, then they’re all a little bit fucked, because Eddie’s fire won’t be coming to his aid while they’re still high.</p><p>Fuck, damn, shit.</p><p>“Should’ve brought a baseball bat,” he mutters, and together the Losers, sans two members, plunge deeper into the forest.</p><p>--</p><p>All things considered, it’s a miracle that Eddie has not stress-puked into the bushes. He was ready for visions. He is not at all ready for time travel, or whatever the fuck this is, and this is without taking into account the fact that for once in his life he can’t—there’s no <em>fire</em>. Or, well, there still is, but it’s only an ember, only some heat lurking underneath his palms instead of the flickering flame he’s half-expecting to pop into existence. He wonders how long this will last—he’ll have to ask Richie, later, Richie’s the one who’s keeping a comprehensive list of drugs and their effects on them in his head. He probably has some idea how long those effects last.</p><p>Eddie sort of doesn’t want to ask, though. The only reason why Richie even has that list is because Brenner and his fucking goons saw the advantage in a guinea pig that could heal himself <em>fast</em>, even if Richie didn’t seem able to heal other people.</p><p>Speaking of Richie—</p><p>“Hey, do you think dinosaurs shit bigger turds than pigeons do while flying?”</p><p>Eddie hears Stan groan behind him. Overheard, mighty wings flap above them, and Eddie looks up and strangles a whimper in his throat.</p><p>“I’m just <em>asking</em>,” says Richie. “Holy shit, look at the size of that thing.”</p><p>“I’m not looking,” says Stan. His eyes are squeezed shut, and Eddie just—jeez, his heart breaks for Stan, the guy always did like the world to be far more ordered and far more sensible than it really was.</p><p>Eddie looks up at the sky, and reins in the hysterical laugh that threatens to bubble out of him. That thing flapping above them, with great big feathered wings? That is <em>not</em> a bird, that’s one of the common bird’s gigantic ancestors, and as much as Eddie would dearly love this to be a drug-induced hallucination, he can <em>see</em> the outline of sunlight through a ragged wing.</p><p>It thankfully does not drop a giant shit on them. So that’s a small miracle.</p><p>The river grows louder as they get closer, and by the time they emerge from the underbrush, the river is so loud Eddie has to shout to be heard, yelling, “Rich, you’ve been here before, what the fuck’s going on?”</p><p>“I’m only just now remembering!” Richie yells back, yanking Stan out of the way as some great big creature lumbers past them, unmindful of them. Then insects the size of their fucking heads buzz past them, then other reptiles and dinosaurs, running as fast as they can. Running <em>away</em> from something. “I think something bad’s coming!”</p><p>“Should we run?” Bev asks. Now all has fallen silent, except the roaring river. Eddie doesn’t like this silence. It’s the kind of quiet you get in the moments before the thunder booms across the sky, before the intruder in a home invasion movie starts approaching the closet the protagonist is trapped in. It’s the kind of silence that puts Eddie in mind of a predator stalking its prey.</p><p>“Fuck yes, we should run!” Richie says, immediately breaking the silence.</p><p>“This isn’t real,” Stan is chanting to himself, eyes squeezed tightly shut, his voice mingling with the river’s rumbling, “we’re just really high, this isn’t real, we’re just really high.”</p><p>Ben, helpfully, walks over and picks Stan up like Stan is just a pair of grapes. “What’s this something bad?” he asks.</p><p>“Uh, guys,” says Bev.</p><p>“Something to do with It, I remember,” says Richie, but he’s frowning, scratching the back of his head. “And a spaceship?”</p><p>“Guys?” Bev says.</p><p>“You’re sure you weren’t just, like, really fucking high?” Eddie asks.</p><p>“We were high,” says Richie, “but I know what I saw.”</p><p>“<em>Guys!</em>” Beverly bellows, getting their attention. Eddie follows the line of her finger, looking up at the sky. His stomach drops right out of his body when he sees it in the distance, hears that tuneless, soulless sound. Or, no, he doesn’t <em>hear</em>, the truth is he <em>feels</em> it in his bones, a low thrumming vibration that starts in his feet and ends in ringing through his eardrums.</p><p>The vibration starts to rise in pitch, more and more, and yeah, this time it’s definitely a sound, accompanied by a visual: a bright white speck of light, no bigger than a piece of glitter. He might’ve mistaken it for a star if not for the sun shining brightly, gleaming like a silver coin hung in the sky.</p><p>It draws closer, closer, closer. With an awful, sinking feeling, Eddie thinks, <em>Shit, this is when It shows up.</em></p><p>And then Richie’s tearing across the distance, saying, “Eddie, hey, Eddie, take my hand, guys, we gotta run and we gotta fucking run <em>now!</em>”</p><p>Stan’s staring up at the sky. He looks—well, like he’s having basically the worst day of his life. Ben, who’s still holding on to him, says, “<em>Bev</em>—”</p><p>Beverly has already taken off running away from the—the <em>spaceship</em>, all right, fine, that’s the closest word they have for the thing that’s setting the sky on fire and coming for them. Richie takes off running, Eddie right behind him, but they haven’t been running for too long when a great thunderous explosion punches through the air. It’s bad enough that one moment Eddie’s vertical, the next he’s lying in the dirt facedown, and he’s pretty sure he’s bleeding from his ears. Richie’s shaking him, eyes wide and frightened, and they look back in time to see Stan and Ben staggering to their feet.</p><p>Bev runs back towards them, says, “Are they—”</p><p>“I think they might need help,” says Richie.</p><p>Bev goes back, helping haul Stan up to his feet. Eddie spits out dirt from his mouth, then absently scoops something up, a smooth polished stone, and sticks it into his pocket. Richie picks him back up onto his feet, and as soon as Ben, Bev and Stan have caught back up to them, Stan swearing up and down in Yiddish, they start running again, close to each other. And close to the animals running as fast as they can in the complete opposite direction from the thing coming for them, bringing fire and smoke and death with it.</p><p>There is a <em>lot</em> of smoke. Eddie coughs, clapping his hand over his mouth, trying to keep the smoke out of his lungs in vain. His eyes are swimming, and his throat has closed to a pinhole, breath barely managing to escape or come in. His legs are pumping as much as they can, but they can’t outrun this, they <em>can’t</em>—</p><p>Everything begins to grey out. The vibrant greens of the prehistoric forest around them desaturate little by little, flaking away like a painting in a museum exposed to the elements, the reds and blues and greens draining out as the smoke and the water and the fire catch up to them. Then Eddie takes a step and</p><p>they</p><p>
  <em>fall</em>
</p><p>down</p><p>down</p><p>down until—</p><p>they crash into the forest floor. But this time it’s not as far back as a million years ago, this time Eddie recognizes the Barrens, the Kenduskeag, everything. But he doesn’t recognize the people traipsing through the river on stepping stones, wearing old-timey workers’ clothes and looking worried. When was this?</p><p>“Okay, this is new,” says Richie, shakily. “When—When are we?”</p><p>Ben, staggering over to them, squints at the men. Then he says, “This is 1908, I think. Those are the union men.”</p><p>“The ones who got brutally murdered?” Richie asks.</p><p>“Four of them got brutally murdered,” Ben corrects. “Some just disappeared. Cloutier was an exception, but he was always a little off after—that…” He stops, then says, “We have to follow them.”</p><p>“Oh, good, we’re following the murder victims now,” says Stan. Eddie feels relief crash back over him, but steps away to pull Stan closer into his side. “Because this—whatever <em>this</em> is, it hasn’t been insane enough.”</p><p>“I don’t think we’ve seen what we have to see just yet,” says Beverly, coming up with Stan. Now they’re all squeezed together in the bushes, five fully-grown adults hiding like kids in the trees, peeping on the adults who’ve come to discuss grown-up stuff like union organization. “Seeing how It came was part of it, but we’re here to kill It. We’re here to learn from the past.”</p><p>“They didn’t do it very well since It’s still around,” Richie muses.</p><p>“But they tried,” says Ben. “Maybe we can fix what went wrong, if we can look.”</p><p>“Or we just get brand new nightmares,” says Richie.</p><p>“Well,” says Eddie, contemplatively, “it can’t be any worse than the dinosaurs.” He takes Richie by the hand, and squeezes tightly. Richie squeezes back, and the two of them move as quietly as possible, with Ben, Bev and Stan right behind them. They probably look a sight, Eddie imagines, five fully-grown adults sneaking into a meeting like kids trying to sneak into their parents’ office to eavesdrop on important calls.</p><p>A twig cracks. No one turns to look at them, as they venture deeper into the forest and hide behind a tree.</p><p>Six people. Bad plan, Eddie knows immediately, six isn’t lucky seven. Six is too few people. He watches as one of them, a man with kind blue eyes and worn clothes, puts a strange container in the middle of the circle.</p><p>“Okay,” says the man. “Okay. For Laura.”</p><p>“And Josiah,” says another man.</p><p>“And Catherine,” says another man, taking off his wide-brimmed hat and bowing his head, as if trying to hide the tears. Eddie squints. Has he seen that hat before, in the museum? Didn’t Mike mention a hat?</p><p>“And hopefully for changing the big bosses’ minds,” says a different man, his accent so thickly Maine it’s a wonder Eddie can understand him. “And, I s’pose, for all those poor missing bastards as well.”</p><p>“They’re <em>children</em>, Claude, this is really for them,” says the man who started this all.</p><p>“And for changing the bosses’ minds on the whole union thing,” says Claude. “You’d better be right about this, David, man. I—The union’s not gonna be able to stand it if we lose you.”</p><p>“Who’s got the knife?” David says with a sigh.</p><p>“I do, I do, here, Dave,” says the fourth man, with a beard shot through with white, pulling a knife out of his pocket. David steps over to take it from him, then cuts his palm open in a very familiar gesture, holding his eyes the whole time.</p><p>Eddie sucks in a shaky breath. For the first time in a very long time, he wishes very badly that he had his inhaler with him. He can feel the heat underneath his skin, the fire yearning to get out, but the drugs from before have smothered the connection. So hey—small fucking mercies, he supposes.</p><p>“They’re doing it wrong,” says Stan, in a dreamy sort of tone.</p><p>Four faces turn towards Stan. “Uh, what the fuck are you talking about?” Richie asks.</p><p>Stan blinks, as if he’s just now coming out of a trance, and frowns at them all. “Be quiet,” he says. “I’m trying to watch.” He squints at the ritual taking place in front of them, counts again, and says, “I think—Ben, you knew Derry history, who are these people?”</p><p>“I can’t really tell, it’s too dark,” says Ben, “but from the names, I’d say—the union organizers, from around 1908 or so. And Cloutier and Heroux among them.” He frowns, and says, “I didn’t know Cloutier was with the union. I didn’t even know they fought It.”</p><p>“Well, not like the clown shows up much in the history books,” Richie points out.</p><p>“Plus, it’s a <em>union</em>,” Beverly says. “Men in power aren’t big fans of unions. They make it harder to get away with shit.”</p><p>Eddie chances a glance at her, notes the tense set of her jaw. Not for the first time since the Jade of the Orient, he wonders what she’s hiding under her sleeves, if she’s really doing as okay as she says she is. He—really isn’t sure, anymore.</p><p>Beyond them, the men have clasped their hands together. They’ve begun to chant, their voices rising as they speak in unison, magic twisting and twining through their words. The cold air seems to almost crackle with power, and Eddie feels the hairs on the back of his neck begin to rise. He reaches for Richie’s hand again, and Richie nudges Beverly aside to take up the space next to Eddie.</p><p>Bev raises an eyebrow towards them both. Eddie doesn’t look at her. So he and Richie are a little—<em>weird</em>, about each other, fine. So what? They’re married, they’ve been married for years, they’re entitled to be a little weird about each other.</p><p>Something begins to descend from the sky. Eddie’s eyes track upwards, but Stan snaps out, “Don’t look! Those are the <em>deadlights</em>!”</p><p>“Okay, okay,” says Eddie, squeezing his eyes shut. He lets go of Richie’s hand, briefly mourning the loss, and shields his eyes from the bright light spiraling downwards from the sky. “Jesus, it’s bright.”</p><p>“Whatever you do, don’t look at them,” says Bev. “Look anywhere else but <em>not at them.</em>”</p><p>Eddie swings his gaze around to Ben, who’s shielded his eyes from the deadlights as well. “Shit,” Ben says, “look at Cloutier. No wonder he went insane.”</p><p>Eddie risks a glance at Cloutier, and sucks in a horrified breath. The man is <em>floating</em>, having been unable to avert his gaze from the deadlights in time. As he floats upwards, his hands, slippery with blood, slide out of his companions’. Shouts of <em>no!</em> break the chant, and the container in the center begins shaking. An all-too-familiar cackle fills the space around them, and Eddie nearly jumps into Richie’s arms out of sheer terror.</p><p>And the container <em>shatters</em>, in a great thunderous explosion. Eddie buries his face in Richie’s shoulder instinctively as blinding white light shines out, but somewhere under the ringing he hears someone in the distance shouting, “Hey! Hey, it’s those union fuckers! <em>Let’s fucking get them!</em>”</p><p>“We gotta go,” says Ben, and Eddie blinks away the spots that have appeared in his vision, to see a great, big, hulking <em>creature</em> with eight legs, too many eyes, and a mouth with rows and rows and <em>rows</em> of teeth peering down at the union organizers. At <em>them</em>.</p><p><em>It</em>, Eddie realizes, very quickly. It is—far bigger than Eddie thought it would be, could ever get, standing at nearly the same height as the trees around them. It stalks around the frozen, terrified organizers, who have started pulling Cloutier back down, who are trying to shake him awake from the Deadlights. <em><b>can’t catch me,</b></em> it says, singsong, <em><b>i’m the Spider! but let’s play a game, since you wanted to play so badly.</b></em></p><p>Is it just Eddie’s imagination, or is one of its many, many eyes fixed on the five of them?</p><p><b><em>wanna watch?</em></b> It asks, singsong.</p><p>Okay, yeah, not his imagination, then.</p><p>“We need to <em>go</em>,” says Ben, grabbing hold of Stan, who’s frozen up in sheer terror.</p><p>“Fucking absolutely,” says Richie. “Bev—”</p><p>“Yeah, I’m coming, I’m coming!” Beverly snaps, tossing a last glance over her shoulder as she pulls away, the five of them abandoning all pretense at hiding. “Oh, god, what the <em>fuck</em>—”</p><p>Eddie does not get very far, because he and Richie slam right into what <em>feels</em> like a solid wall. But no, it’s just a guy who’s exceedingly well-built, wielding an axe and a thunderously murderous look. For a moment, as the two of them are staring up at this guy from the dirt, Eddie’s bladder threatens to let go, but the man never even seems to notice them. “Union <em>bastards</em>,” he spits, hefting his axe and walking forward, as though Richie and Eddie were never even there.</p><p><b><em>aw, but you came all the way here to play, didn’t you?</em></b> Its voice asks, faux-wounded. <b><em>left your little hideaway and your safe little lives to play with your old, lonely friend! and i’m so lonely, i am, no one wants to play with the clown anymore.</em></b></p><p>From one heartbeat to the next, Eddie finds himself covered, very fast, by his dirt-covered, wide-eyed husband, as if Richie is trying to shield him from Its sight.</p><p>And then Ben hauls them both up, and says, “Come on, we have to go, we’re getting out of here—”</p><p>“But we haven’t—” Eddie starts.</p><p>“I saw, I saw,” Bev says, scrambling up behind Ben, Stan holding on to her and searching frantically through his pockets. There’s a thin trickle of blood coming out of her left nostril. “I know what went wrong in the ritual. I know what we have to do.”</p><p>Stan yanks out some tissue paper, dabs at her upper lip, and says, “Let’s <em>go</em>!”</p><p>--</p><p>
  <em>From the diary of Richie Tozier:</em>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">September 17, 2006</span>
</p><p>So we caught some news while drinking yesterday, and that was rough, finding out just how much shit happened while Eddie and I were “away” and how much context for shit now we don’t know about. (There’s a new Bush in office and neither of us knew!!) Today we’re doing something about it. Or, well, Eddie’s doing something about the huge gap in our knowledge, I’m just sitting at a table in a public library writing. Every time someone comes by, I get asked what I’m writing, and I just end up telling them I’m writing the new version of Rip van Winkle. It’s not even that much of a lie if you really think about it. Poor Rip, asleep a hundred years, wakes up to find the world moved on without him. It’s gotta be really fucked up seeing how much things changed, when five minutes ago they were the same as they ever were.</p><p>Lucky bastard. At least he was asleep the whole time. Probably had a really nice dream, too. Even just nine years crawls on by when you’re stuck somewhere, and if I hadn’t had Eddie I probably would’ve given up a long time ago. Nine years is a really long time to spend under someone’s thumb. Nine years is a really long time for a guinea pig to live when you think about it.</p><p>I don’t have a mark of those nine years on me, not physically. Not that they didn’t try to leave a mark. I’ve had my appendix removed so many times I’ve lost count, and each time the damn thing just grows back, and my stomach looks good as new like always. I’ve had multiple invasive surgeries performed and important organs taken out and each time I just wake back up again. It’s like Sisyphus rolling a boulder up a hill, except the boulder talks back unless you drug it so much it has an overdose. But then it just bounces back and you’ve gotta roll the fucking thing up a hill again.</p><p>But I don’t sleep easy. Neither of us do. Eddie always has to be sure we’re out of sight lines, and I can’t exactly blame him when I’m the one sweeping the room for bugs.</p><p>We’re both just a fucked-up pair, aren’t we.</p><p>--</p><p>The smoke clears, and Richie comes to with Bill crouched right in front of him, eyes wide and worried. “Y-Y-You guys o-oh-okay?” he asks.</p><p>Richie turns to the side to cough, or more likely to hack up a lung, then turns back to Bill. “I’m never smoking again,” he informs him. “Everyone all right? Eddie?”</p><p>“I’m fine,” Eddie says, having moved away from everyone else, frantically beating his slightly smoking hand against the walls of the clubhouse. “Just, uh, you know, I’d like to get out of here right the fuck now before I accidentally <em>burn this place down</em>, that’d be great.”</p><p>“Here,” Stan starts, “I’ll—”</p><p>“No, I’ll do it,” Richie cuts in, staggering to his feet and knocking his head on one of the ceiling beams. “Ow! Jesus <em>Christ</em>, I could’ve sworn this place was bigger before.”</p><p>“Yeah, because the drugs wore off,” Stan says.</p><p>“It wasn’t <em>just</em> the drugs, Stan, remember?” Ben points out, and Stan pinches the bridge of his nose.</p><p>“Yes, I do remember, and I want to fucking <em>forget</em>,” Stan says, and the funny thing is, he sounds almost offended by this whole mess. Same old Stan. He always did prefer the world around him to be in order, to be rational and understandable. He hasn’t grown up so much as he’s simply grown into that. “We went up against that? When we were <em>kids</em>? How the fuck did we all <em>survive</em> when so many didn’t, and get away with superpowers in the bargain?”</p><p>“Luck?” Richie guesses.</p><p>“The turtle,” says Beverly, in a dreamy voice.</p><p>“The <em>what</em>, now,” says Mike, squinting at her.</p><p>Bev shakes her head, as if trying to clear the disorientation from her field of vision. “What?” she asks.</p><p>“You m-m-muh-mentioned a turtle,” Bill points out.</p><p>Bev frowns at him, confused, and says, “Why would I? That’s a really weird thing to say in the middle of this shit.”</p><p>There’s a shadow over Stan’s face now, though, and suddenly Richie wonders just how much Stan knows. Wonders enough that he says, out loud, “Hey, Stan, don’t think too hard over there, yeah?”</p><p>“The turtle couldn’t help us,” says Stan, sounding as dreamy as Bev.</p><p>Richie stares at Stan, then looks helplessly at Eddie, who shrugs in answer. <em>Fucking search me,</em> he doesn’t say. They’ve been married long enough that Richie likes to think he can understand Eddie’s body language as well as his actual words.</p><p>“What turtle?” Ben asks, directing the question to Mike.</p><p>“Yeah, that’s new to me too,” says Mike, watching both Stan and Bev with a furrowed brow, like they’ve just come up with puzzle pieces he didn’t even know were missing from the puzzle. “I’ve seen mentions of a turtle god, but no more than that. Maybe once we’ve found our tokens and we have some time I can look into that.”</p><p>“I’m sorry, hold up,” says Richie, “what’s this about <em>tokens?</em>”</p><p>“I’m getting to that,” says Mike. “You guys saw the ritual, I’m guessing? I figured out where they went wrong, with a little help from Cloutier—they <em>didn’t</em> sacrifice something.”</p><p>“Oh, a sacrifice,” says Richie, “I nominate me.”</p><p>“Wait, what?” Stan asks, eyes widening.</p><p>“You are <em>not</em> nominating <em>yourself</em> to be a fucking <em>human sacrifice</em>—” Eddie starts, already beginning to fume in the way that Richie finds so cute on him.</p><p>“I mean, it’s me or you, ‘cause you’re a little guy, you can fit on a barbecue,” says Richie. “But I’m basically invincible, I can just get right back up again after somebody sticks a knife in me.”</p><p>“Okay, first of all, I’m five-nine which is <em>average height</em>, asshole,” says Eddie, jabbing a finger into Richie’s shoulder, “second of all, that absolutely is not fucking happening. It is <em>not</em>, no one is sticking a fucking knife into you—”</p><p>“It’s not that kind of suh-sacrifice, Richie,” says Bill, sounding as exhausted as he used to when they were younger and he’d just lost Georgie. Richie’s heart twists into a knot at the thought of poor little Georgie, and poor Bill, walking around with a hole in his heart where Georgie’s name used to be.</p><p>“The past is buried,” says Mike, “and you’re going to have to dig it up, piece by piece. These tokens are those pieces—representations of our pasts, things that can jog our memories, that we can use as a sacrifice in the ritual.” He looks around at all of them, and says, “It’s the only way we stand a chance against It.”</p><p>“Okay,” says Ben. “So where do we find those tokens, then? And how do we know if we’ve found them?”</p><p>Mike sighs. “You guys are not going to like hearing this,” he says.</p><p>--</p><p>“We are not splitting up,” says Eddie, flatly, once they’ve climbed out into the fresh air again. “Statistically speaking, we’re less likely to draw danger our way if we all just stuck together.”</p><p>“Yeah, splitting up’s just fucking <em>stupid</em>,” says Richie, running a hand through his hair. Did spiders get into his hair or something? Christ. He can feel Stan’s eyes burning a hole in the back of his neck, feel the smug <em>I told you so</em> coming off Stan in waves even without looking at him. “We were together that whole summer, weren’t we? Why the fuck should we split up like we’re a bunch of—of stupid-ass teenagers in a shitty horror movie?”</p><p>“Yeah, but we weren’t together the <em>whole</em> summer,” Mike says, nodding to Bill. “Remember?”</p><p>Bill puts his face in his hands, muffling a loud groan. “I r-r-remember,” he says. “After th-the f-ffff-fuh-hirst time we w-wuh-went to Neibolt, we spuh-split ways.”</p><p>“Wait, hold on, <em>what?</em>” Eddie asks.</p><p>“Oh, yeah,” says Richie, now remembering with a tinge of deep embarrassment, at a remove of twenty-seven years. “You punched me in the face after I screamed at you about Georgie being dead and you being in denial.”</p><p>“You and Bill <em>what?</em>” Eddie half-shrieks.</p><p>“Did we ever even tell you?” Beverly asks, frowning at Eddie, as if she’s trying to recall. “I feel like we told you.”</p><p>“You didn’t! None of you did! I would remember!”</p><p>“Babe,” says Richie, patting Eddie, his husband and the love of his life and the man he is going to spend the rest of his life with <em>so fuckin’ help him god</em>, on the back, “if the past few days have taught us anything, it’s that our memory is reliable for <em>shit-all</em>.”</p><p>Eddie subsides, then, and says, “It can’t have been long, though, right?”</p><p>“It was like a w-w-w-week,” says Bill.</p><p>“Long enough to count,” says Mike.</p><p>“But we’ve got the shower caps,” says Richie, steering the conversation back. “Those count as tokens, right? Seven shower caps for seven of us, no need to go hunting around the town.”</p><p>“Nope,” says Mike. “I told you. It has to be found on your own.”</p><p>“Damn it,” Stan grumbles, stuffing his own shower cap into his pocket. “I was sort of hoping I could use mine instead.”</p><p>“I will say, though, I do agree with Eddie here,” Bev speaks up. “Derry is—is dangerous, and this sounds like the kind of thing that could end just as badly as something Bill’s written.” She nods to Bill, says, “No offense, I meant—”</p><p>“Yeah, no, I kn-knuh-know what you mmmm-m-meant,” says Bill. “We sh-shuh-should swap ph-phuh-huh-hone numbers. Eddie and B-B-Beverly aren’t wrong, and if we c-c-can’t stick t-t-t-t-together on this one then at least we ought to s-suh-stay in contact.” He looks over at Mike, and says, “Unless that violates the t-terms of the rrrr-ritual?”</p><p>Mike chews on his lower lip, then shakes his hand. “It shouldn’t,” he says. “No reason we can’t keep in contact, in case something goes wrong.”</p><p>Eddie’s hand darts into his jacket, fumbling a hand sanitizer out of it. “Fucking hate phone swaps,” he grumbles. Richie bumps his shoulder, links his fingers together with Eddie.</p><p>“You’ve got all our contact numbers,” says Ben. “I have no clue how you managed that, by the way, mine’s private, but—you have the list, right? You can pass it around.”</p><p>“I’m a librarian, I do a lot of research,” says Mike, which is the most bullshit thing Richie has heard in the past three days, and he has heard a lot of bullshit since Mike called. He doesn’t call Mike out on it, mostly bc Eddie has scooted closer to him and whispered, “We’re not splitting up, are we?”</p><p>“Fuck no,” Richie whispers right back.</p><p>--</p><p>
  <b>BUZZFEED UNSOLVED: TRUE CRIME</b>
  <br/>
  <em>The Bizarre Disappearances of Eddie Kaspbrak and Richie Tozier</em>
</p><p>
  <em>[Two pictures flash on the screen: one of Richie Tozier, 21 years old and wearing glasses, and another of Eddie Kaspbrak, also 21 years old, smiling in a reserved fashion at the camera.]</em>
</p><p><b>RYAN BERGARA:</b> <em>[narrating]</em> Richard Wentworth Tozier and Edward Kaspbrak were students studying completely different majors at New York’s Columbia University—Richard, better known as Richie, was an aspiring comedian working on a Film major, while Edward was working in a degree in finances. Their only real link to each other was through their sole shared class in Applied Chemistry, where they were assigned as each other’s lab partners. By all accounts, Richie and Edward absolutely <em>hated</em> each other—one classmate even claimed that “Rich and Eddie would argue over every single little thing under the sun and then some that weren’t. They would antagonize each other to the point where our teacher would throw them out of the class if they got too noisy.”</p><p>
  <em>[CUT TO: Shane Madej and Ryan Bergara sitting next to each other in the Buzzfeed Unsolved studio.]</em>
</p><p><b>SHANE MADEJ:</b> Did they ever, you know, just change lab partners?</p><p><b>RYAN:</b> Apparently not, so far as I could find. All their friends and classmates, especially in that class, never saw them switch lab partners, even though the option was available, so I figure—</p><p><b>SHANE:</b> They were fuckin’?</p><p><b>RYAN:</b> <em>[laughs]</em> Yeah, something like that.</p><p>
  <em>[BACK TO: the two pictures. Eddie’s picture fades briefly out, moving to the side as Richie’s rises up to make room for quotations.]</em>
</p><p><b>RYAN:</b> Richie was an aspiring comedian, at the time of his disappearance. Anecdotes from Richie’s friends tell us that he was on the verge of auditioning for <em>Saturday Night Live</em>, and many of his friends believe that if he had managed to get to that audition, he would have earned himself a spot on the SNL roster. He was already being named as a rising star on the comedy circuit, and meeting with agents to discuss his career. One agent even called him “perhaps one of the funniest wannabe comedians I’ve ever met, although his act could use some polishing from outside parties.”</p><p>
  <em> [BLACK BACKGROUND, where Shane and Ryan’s dialogue appear in color-coded text.] </em>
</p><p><b>SHANE:</b> So ghostwriters then?</p><p><b>RYAN:</b> Apparently! Allegedly some of Richie’s material wasn’t as relatable as it could be, but otherwise it was, it was pretty solid stuff.</p><p><b>SHANE:</b> I feel kinda bad for the guy, honestly, I mean, poor fucker, he was going to be on SNL. Can you imagine being Richie Tozier and being like, “Fuck <em>yeah</em> I’m gonna be on Saturday Night Live, I’m gonna be the biggest star, I’m gonna be famous! Oh, hey there sir with the creepy black van, are you by any chance a manager looking for someone to manage?”</p><p><b>RYAN:</b> <em>[wheezes]</em> “Uhhhhh yes sure definitely. Totally. Step into this van.”</p><p><b>SHANE:</b> “Gosh, this must be my lucky day!”</p><p>
  <em> [BACK TO: Richie’s picture, shoved to the side now to make room for Eddie’s.] </em>
</p><p><b>RYAN:</b> Edward Kaspbrak, on the other hand, was applying for internships to various banks and prestigious insurance firms, and had vague plans of possibly becoming a risk analyst. His ex-girlfriend Colleen Huang, a law student at the time, recalls that Edward was “just an incredibly intense person, but at the same time very intelligent and loyal to the people he loved.” On the day of his disappearance, he was a week into an internship at Oswalt Insurance, and his boss recalls him as “a conscientious worker, but something about him didn’t quite fit into our work environment.”</p><p>
  <em> [BLACK BACKGROUND and colored text again.] </em>
</p><p><b>SHANE:</b> “Wasn’t cutthroat enough.”</p><p><b>RYAN:</b> “Did not kick enough puppies.”</p><p><b>SHANE:</b> “Actually went and asked for a raise!”</p><p>
  <em> [BACK TO: Richie’s and Eddie’s pictures.] </em>
</p><p><b>RYAN:</b> On October 8, 1997, at around 2:50 PM, both Richie and Edward exited their respective classes. Neither ever made it to their next class. Neither ever returned to their dorms. Neither were ever seen again.</p><p>
  <em> [Richie’s and Eddie’s pictures are converted into negative versions, before they vanish, as if into thin air. BACK TO black background and colored text.] </em>
</p><p><b>SHANE:</b> Spooky.</p><p><b>RYAN:</b> Very spooky! Especially since Richie and Edward were previously conscientious students—they didn’t miss a class if they could help it.</p><p><b>SHANE:</b> That’s really the first—the first sign right there, ‘cause it’s never the, the slackers who go missing mysteriously, it’s always the ones who you’re just immediately like, “Yeah he never does this, something is wrong here.”</p><p><b>RYAN:</b> If you’re a slacker and you suddenly disappear nobody’s gonna notice until like, exam time.</p><p><b>SHANE:</b> “Hey wait a minute does anyone know if Kevin was ever planning to come to exams or not?”</p><p><b>RYAN:</b> “Dunno, I mean, it’s Kevin, he’s never here. He’s probably like, chilling in the dorm or something.”</p><p><b>SHANE:</b> “Yeah, where else would he even be?”</p>
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